PAGES signs Future Earth MoU
As we've previously outlined, the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), PAGES’ umbrella organization since its inception in 1991, will conclude by the end of 2015. As a core project of IGBP, PAGES was invited to transition to Future Earth, a large research platform for global sustainability that has been developing over the last few years.
Future Earth is essentially a federation of projects and other initiatives dedicated to providing the knowledge and support to accelerate our transformation to a sustainable world. It aims to provide the knowledge required for society to understand and address challenges posed by global environmental change, and to seize opportunties for transitions to global sustainability.
Some time ago, PAGES’ Scientific Steering Committee decided that PAGES would accept the invitation to join Future Earth and the signing of this MoU officially marks that transition.
PAGES looks forward to contributing to Future Earth's vision and goals and accordingly has revised its scientific structure to better align with Future Earth’s philosophies of integration and societally-relevant science. PAGES’ new science structure addresses the key components of the Earth system through the themes Climate, Environment, and Humans. These themes, which define our scientific scope also reflect a more holistic Earth system science approach than our previous structure.
Our new program affiliation with Future Earth (as well as our recently formed scientific partnership with WCRP) are likely to entail more diverse and active connections to external groups of scientists and practitioners. The networks of the two programs extend the range of potential scientific contacts from the geosphere-biosphere community of IGBP to the entire range of sustainability science disciplines. Moreover, both Future Earth and WCRP will offer opportunities for highly interdisciplinary collaborative research, which should foster active collaborations across PAGES and its sister projects as well as other organizations.
Read the Future Earth/PAGES MoU here.
Read more about PAGES' scientific partnership with the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) here.