2009 Theme: Climate, Environment and Energy

The second edition of the Bergen Summer Research School to be held 22 June – 3 July and dedicated to the theme of Climate, Environment and Energy. The 2009 theme will intersect with the other key topics of the Bergen Summer Research School (poverty, health, norms, values, language and culture) and will be structured around the following concepts:

• Mitigation
• Adaptation
• Responsibilities
• Opportunities

Considering the predicted dramatic increase in the energy demand in the next decades, one can easily argue that one of the key issues is also a global energy challenge. These are also fundamentally economic challenges, leading to rethink new forms of local, national and global governance. In addition, it is crucial to take as a key point of departure that addressing these challenges requires substantial changes in human behavior, values, worldviews and beliefs, people’s levels of cognition and consciousness, cultural norms, and so on. Adaptation and mitigation are already getting enormous attention worldwide, yet what kinds are beneficial and sustainable? And how can we imagine perspectives that do not conflate poverty and adaptation while at the same time not forgetting the interests of the poor; adaptation for whom and for what?  Alternative sources of energy are now an emergency, but so is the need for energy conservation and alternative consumption patterns among the rich.

A particular emphasis will be held on the human and social dimensions of climate change and the global energy challenge; questions related to economics, water and food supply and availability, biodiversity, health, the political challenges of our current generation, and ethical questions, including debating global and national responsibilities. The BSRS 2009, however, also aims to offer a platform for presentation of current innovation coming from the private sector, as well as successful examples of bottom up activities where mitigation and adaption have become also opportunities for improve livelihoods and new economic opportunities for poor groups and people. 

Bergen Summer Research School 2009 aims thus to promote dialogue across academic disciplines, the private sector, government, civil society organizations and to raise awareness and incentives for all those sectors. We aim to offer truly interdisciplinary approaches and to develop tools to overcome methodological and epistemological challenges. Last, the north-south dimension will be always kept as a fundamental issue.

• BSRS 2009 will accept a maximum of 100 candidates
• Deadline for applications is extended to 1 March 2009

It is now well established that the global climate is changing due to human activities, in particular related to burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. These activities are tightly linked to socioeconomic and political models that have transferred advanced economies to their current state of development. As a consequence, both observations and climate models show large-scale changes in major weather patterns, increased frequency of extreme weather events, and in the state of the global ocean and cryosphere systems. These changes pose new pressures to ecosystems worldwide and lead to progressive and crucial challenges for socio-economic, health and political structures and trans-national relations, as well as to new relations between humans and their environment. Also considering the predicted dramatic increase in the energy demand in the next decade, one can easily argue that one of the key issues is also a global energy challenge. These are also fundamentally economic challenges, also leading to rethink new forms of local, national and global governance. In addition, it is crucial to take as a key point of departure that addressing these challenges requires substantial changes in human behavior, values, worldviews and beliefs, people’s levels of cognition and consciousness, cultural norms, and so on. Adaptation and mitigation are already getting enormous attention worldwide, yet what kinds are beneficial and sustainable? And how can we imagine perspectives that do not conflate poverty and adaptation while at the same time not forgetting the interests of the poor; adaptation for whom and for what?  Alternative sources of energy are now an emergency, but so is the need for energy conservation and alternative consumption patterns among the rich.

In addition there is a particular need for alternative sources of energy yet many challenges remain. In particular, challenges are expected in the crossing between global development challenges, poverty and vulnerability, food availability and security, health, availability of water and climate change, infrastructure for energy transportation (such as unsuitability of the available grid in most countries). These challenges require a high level of innovation and joint work. Because of unavoidable changes in climate, there will be increased migration, increased refugee flow, and humanitarian crises affecting the mobility of large numbers of people with immediate and direct consequences for advanced economies.

Rich and healthy nations may have the capacity to adapt and mitigate such climate change-related changes but they also have an undeniable responsibility to better understand and predict the above-mentioned crossing issues. Such a responsibility includes not only the facing of serious moral dilemmas related to the fact that human induced climate change is primarily driven by economic activity and resource use that had historically benefited them, but a responsibility to propose pro-active measures driven by cross-disciplinary research and thus the production of new knowledge. In particular, new knowledge is needed to potentially mitigate negative consequences on people in developing parts of the word as well as vulnerable and disadvantaged groups within advanced societies. These people, in general, are not responsible for the ongoing global warming and have little resources and capacity to mitigate and adapt to the undeniable changes that will come. All countries, advanced as well as less and developing economies, have an obligation to protect future generations, the environment and ecosystems. For a rich, petroleum-producing and highly engaged donor country like Norway, such issues and ethical dilemmas have particular importance and call for special responsibilities, including the responsibility to produce new knowledge.

Our 2009 Program aims to offer a platform for debating alternative energy sources and their challenges, innovative work in the private sectors, will offer disciplinary, interdisciplinary and problem oriented doctoral courses and plenary events aimed at sharing current research in the Bergen milieu and to produce new holistic approaches on the environment and climate change in relations to global the other key themes, global poverty, global health, and norms, values, culture and language.