More than half of the world’s population lives in cities, a trend that is rapidly accelerating, especially in developing countries. In the USA, urban areas are merging into huge megalopitan areas, especially along interstate highways.

Cities require and use large quantities of energy and materials, metabolizing them and generating large quantities of waste products and pollutants, resulting in unsustainable environments that adversely affect ecological integrity and diversity and human health and well-being. As many city dwellers are disconnected from the natural world, it has even been suggested that a new species “homo urbanus” is emerging.

This conference, organized by the journal Environmental Pollution and Elsevier, aims to:

• Present the latest information about urban pollution problems and what measures can be taken to overcome obstacles to sustainability and life quality.
• Hear from leading experts in the field
• Provide network opportunities with a wide delegation of international researchers with common interests and concerns.

In continuity with the 2008 conference “Global Change Research I”, focused on climate modeling and risks/impacts estimation, this second conference of the series will examine the deep interaction between the environmental crisis (climate change, urbanization/land use, exhaustion of resources, degradation of ecosystems) and the energy production and use.

Each semester the department of Animal Ecology at the VU organises a journal club around a specific theme.

The coming period, the journal club will focus on a book: "Community Ecology, Processes, Models and Applications" (see: http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199228980.do).

Klimaat is de laatste tijd vaak in het nieuws (“hot”):  “Kloppen de uitkomsten van IPCC wel?”, “Is er überhaupt sprake van een klimaatprobleem”, “Komt er ooit nog een klimaatakkoord?”, en “Welke oplossingen zijn wel en niet toegestaan?”. In het seminar 'Hot Topics in the Climate Debate', georganiseerd door het Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving (PBL), gaan drie vooraanstaande klimaatonderzoekers in op actuele onderwerpen in het klimaatdebat. Hierbij zal aansluitend ruimte zijn voor debat over de gepresenteerde onderwerpen en zal tevens worden gereflecteerd op de beste wijze om het PBL-onderzoek naar fouten in het werkgroep II rapport van IPCC (2007) uit te voeren.

Climate is a hot topic lately: “Are the outcomes of the IPCC correct?”, “Is there a problem with the climate at all?”, “Will there ever be a climate treaty?”, and “Which solutions are allowed?”. Three leading climate scientists will address these questions and related issues in the seminar ‘Hot topics in the Climate Debate’, organized by the Dutch Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL). There will also be time to debate about these issues and to discuss how PBL should carry out their study about the errors in the work group II report of the IPCC (2007).

Policies have many impacts on environmental and human processes at different spatial and temporal scales. Climate change, biodiversity, energy consumption, water resource management, and food security are a few of the many examples illustrating the complex multi-scale interactions within and between environmental and human processes. This observation fits well within a long history of disappointments in policy and management related to our environment and indicates that scale sensitive governance approaches are required.

The aim of conference is to discuss different perspectives on scaling and governance issues. The starting point is that scaling and governance deserve more attention as a combination, not just in separate studies. We look at this integration as a major challenge for both the social, economic and the natural sciences. In order to get to transdisciplinarity, that is to say, cooperation between scientists from different disciplines as well as policy makers and citizens, vigorous communication between scientists from the natural science and the humanities is needed.

The conference is organized by Wageningen UR. Participants of the conference are invited to discuss integrative concepts, methodologies, and case studies related to scaling and governance issues in complex land systems. Anticipated outcomes of the conference include an international research agenda and recommendations for scale-sensitive governance approaches.