Future Earth Coasts

Heath Kelsey met with the other members of the Future Earth Coasts Executive Committee in Bremen, Germany from September 11-13. Future Earth Coasts’ goal is to strengthen the science-policy interface and contribute to securing sustainable coastal communities. One highlight from the discussions is the next Open Science Conference called ‘Our Coastal Futures’, which will be hosted in October 2020 at the Gold Coast Campus of Southern Cross University in Australia. The conference will focus on integrating all knowledge types, and is an official United Nation endorsed event towards the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

New Future Earth Coasts survey on coastal sustainability

The Tour de Coasts survey by Future Earth Coasts has just launched and is looking for you to share your thoughts and help shape the future of coastal sustainability! This survey explores global priorities, challenges, and opportunities in coastal sustainability. Your input is pivotal for the Future Earth Coasts network. To take the survey, please click here.

Highlights from the SRI Conference in Helsinki, Finland

Alexandra Fries, Heath Kelsey, Vanessa Vargas-Nguyen, and Bill Dennison attended Sustainability Research and Innovation Congress in Helsinki, Finland from June 10-14th. They facilitated several workshops on science communication and stakeholder engagement. They also collaborated with partners from University of South Carolina, University of Bergen, and Future Earth Coasts. The conference was a great venue to advance IAN’s thinking on sustainability and working to solve global challenges. Also, the synthesis and communication that IAN products accomplish was mentioned as an asset that is greatly needed to impact policy-making and improve natural resource management.

IAN attends Future Earth General Assembly meeting in Helsinki, Finland

As the Future Earth Coasts (FEC) US International Project Office lead, Heath Kelsey attended the Future Earth General Assembly meeting in Helsinki, along with FEC Executive Director, Dr. Xiaoyu Fang, from East China Normal University in Shanghai, China. Two full days of meetings addressed the science and research directions for Future Earth, along with business and management questions. Highlights were the discussion around science and research needs from a global perspective. Of special interest were discussions around the issue of scale—how can global research questions be translated into action at the local scale? And of course, meeting Xiaoyu in person for the first time was the highlight of the whole trip!

Working towards a sustainable future at SRI 2025

The fifth annual Sustainability Research & Innovation Congress (SRI) was held in Chicago, Illinois and virtually from June 16–19th. The theme this year was “Shaping a Sustainable Future” and included over 1200 attendees representing over 80 countries. The conference also encompassed some of the following sub-themes throughout the week: hope, actions, solutions, community, collaboration, and resilience. Several IAN staff were in attendance to host workshops about science communication and storytelling, co-producing socio-environmental report cards, and strategies for effective stakeholder engagement. The conference highlighted key global sustainability challenges and the multitude of approaches to solving them, notably through inclusive practices that go beyond the typical scientific research framework.

Heath Kelsey attended a meeting to discuss international responses to climate change in coastal communities, at Thinkers Lodge in Pugwash, Nova Scotia in August this year. The meeting was part of Thinkers Lodge’s continuing commitment to support meetings that address science and societal issues. Hosted by Future Earth Coasts and Thinkers Lodge, fifteen scientists, practitioners, managers, and indigenous representatives from Australia, Canada, Mexico, the Mi'kmaw Nation, USA, and the West Indies were invited to share their perspectives on coastal climate adaptation. Over three days of meetings, we identified key issues, challenges, and ways forward, and convened a local meeting to give the Pugwash community a sense of our discussions and to solicit their valuable insights. For a full description of the meeting and the very interesting history of Thinkers Lodge, read the accompanying blog.

Monsoon School science communication course

On August 5th, IAN virtually attended the final day of the Monsoon School, in collaboration with partners from Future Earth Coasts, to teach a group of nearly 25 students about the principles of Effective Science Communication. Heath Kelsey, Sidney Anderson, and Roshni Nair-Gonzalez led the presentation. The course began with the evaluation of transdisciplinary projects using metrics to analyze concepts and challenges. A discussion on the art of storytelling and narrative to achieve great science communication followed, which included some exercises. The class concluded with a lesson on color theory and designing science communication in presentations, documents, and papers. The Monsoon School group was very enthusiastic about designing powerful communication products. As a bookend to the course, the group went on an overnight excursion to the Thousand Islands archipelago near Jakarta.