'Future Earth' rises into view, thanks to Lesley Hughes

“Future Earth” rose into view when mentioned just last week by Climate Councillor Professor Lesley Hughes.

Professor Hughes was speaking at the launch of the Climate Council’s latest report: “The silent killer: climate change the health impacts of extreme heat”.

Fellow speaker, Research Professor at the University Western Australia, a Vice Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Melbourne, a patron and founding director of the Telethon Kids Institute, and former Australian of the Year, Professor Fiona Stanley, said Future Earth was something new to her.

However, again illustrating her willingness to explore, Professor Stanley said she intended to get involved with Future Earth just as soon as she could.

Future Earth describes itself: “As a major international research platform providing the knowledge and support to accelerate our transformations to a sustainable world.

“Bringing together and in partnership with existing programmes on global environmental change*, Future Earth is an international hub to coordinate new, interdisciplinary approaches to research on three themes: Dynamic Planet, Global Sustainable Development and Transformations towards Sustainability.

“It also aims to be a platform for international engagement to ensure that knowledge is generated in partnership with society and users of science. It is open to scientists of all disciplines, natural and social, as well as engineering, the humanities and law,” it says.

The Climate Council’s latest report was launched last week at a special function in the Ella Latham Auditorium at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital.

Our refusal to acknowledge climate change puts development at risk



World Bank vice president, Rachel Kyte.

Development throughout the world is threatened by our refusal to acknowledge climate change, according to World Bank vice-president and Special Envoy for Climate Change, Rachel Kyte.

An article published on the Future Earth website headed: “Rachel Kyte:Climate change threatens to wipe out development progress” lamented the inattention paid the climate change.

“If you are committed to ending poverty and you are committed to building prosperity, you have to grapple with climate change,” she said.

Praising the fact that European countries were giving 0.7 per cent of their GDP to development,  Ms Kyte said that was being done while letting climate change go ahead in an unmitigated way.

“You are cancelling one out with the other” she said. “That is why climate becomes so important”.

Future Earth is a new 10-year research program aimed at providing the knowledge needed to tackle the most urgent challenges of the 21^st century related to global sustainability.