News

In June 2023 the BRIDGES Coalition began scoping humanities-led sustainability science projects from different regions around the world that address the realities of vulnerable communities and regional territories impacted by social and environmental pressures. 

Drawing on the networks of the coalition’s member organisations and founding partners (UNESCO, CIPSH and Humanities for the Environment), this effort has been undertaken to provide a proof of concept for a signature project now being designed by BRIDGES to make community-anchored and humanities-driven sustainability science, education and action more visible and accessible to the wider scientific community, as well as actionable to policymakers and society more generally.

The result of these preliminary efforts has been the production of a brochure (August 2023) that offers an indicative overview of humanities-led sustainability science projects that actively address challenges increasingly associated with climate change, biodiversity loss, and the pollution and warming of marine, terrestrial and atmospheric systems.

The UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES Coalition is now approaching potential donors to support a three-year project intended to enable a more comprehensive mapping of humanities-led, community-driven sustainability science, education and action. The ambition is to produce two reports in that period focused on (1) transdisciplinary knowledge production and (2) application of convergent knowledge in educational and learning contexts to enable wider adaptation and scaling for greater impact in meeting the challenge of the UN 2030 Agenda.

The project will produce significant analysis and discussion of how humanities-led sustainability science can be made more accessible and useful to policymakers and societies at a wide range of scales, from the local to the international and intergovernmental, as well as recommendations and guidelines for wider implementation for global impact.

The leadership and founding partners of BRIDGES wish to thank all those institutes and organisations that contributed to this pilot scoping effort, and look forward to expanding considerably on this mapping and impact work in the coming 2-3 year period.

The BRIDGES Coalition is excited to take part in the Management of Social Transformations (MOST) Forum, taking place on April 18, 2023. The MOST Forum is the space for solutions-oriented debate on how to reset our societies along a more equitable and smarter path. As a humanities-led sustainability science coalition of the MOST program, the BRIDGES Coalition looks forward to making a meaningful contribution to the Forum.

The MOST Forum accompanies the 16th Ordinary Session (April 18-19) of the Intergovernmental Council (IGC) of the Management of Social Transformations programme, an intergovernmental science programme that aims to build the knowledge-policy nexus for positive and inclusive social change.

The MOST Forum is organized under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Council of the Management of Social Transformations programme (President Amb. Dr. Mary M. Khimulu) and the Office of the Assistant Director-General of UNESCO Social and Human Sciences (ADG/SHS Gabriela Ramos). Leading thinkers and policy-makers from a variety of disciplines will gather at UNESCO in Paris, in Room II, from 2:00 to 6:15 pm (GMT +2), on 18 April 2023 for the Forum. 

The BRIDGES Coalition will be featured in the final panel of the Forum, taking place on April 18, at 17:00 – 18:15, in Room II.

The final panel of the MOST Forum focused on the BRIDGES Coalition on Sustainability Science will be moderated by Brian Head, President of the MOST Scientific Advisory Committee and Professor of Public Policy, University of Queensland (Australia). Introductory remarks setting the scene for the panel discussion will also be offered by Steven Hartman, the Executive Director of BRIDGES. The BRIDGES panel also includes interventions by: Simon Reid-Henry, Director of the Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at Queen Mary University (UK);  Christopher Bail (USA), Professor of Sociology and Political Science, Duke University; Michelle Mycoo (Trinidad and Tobago), IPCC Lead author and Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, The University of the West Indies;  Carlos Álvarez Pereira (Spain), Vice President, The Club of Rome; Nolita Thuna Mvunelo (South Africa), Program Manager, The Club of Rome; and Gil Eyal (Israel), Professor of Sociology at Columbia University.

Learn More & Register Here

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Other sessions earlier in the MOST Forum include a High-Level Panel on Drivers of inequality and ways to tackle it and a Think–Tank Roundtable delving deeper into the policy-research nexus, with a continued focus on reducing inequalities. Participating speakers include:

• Mariana Mazzucato, Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value, University College London, and Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP)
• Peter Gluckman, President of the International Science Council (ISC)
• Mr Gilles Gressani, President of the Groupe d’études géopolitiques
• Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Dean at Cape Town University, Founder of Umlambo Foundation, former Executive Director of UN Women, former Deputy President of South Africa
• Kako Nubukpo, Commissioner of Togo at the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA), former Minister for Foresight and Public Policy Evaluation of Togo​​
• Mathias Vicherat, President, SciencesPo
• Dennis Snower, President, Global Solutions Initiative
• Fabrizio Barca, Coordinator of the Forum on Inequalities and Diversity, Former Minister for Territorial Cohesion of Italy
• Laszlo Andor, Vice-President of the MOST Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) and Senior Fellow at Hertie School of Governance, former EU Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion
• Silvia Giorguli, President of El Colegio de México, A.C. and Professor at the Center for Demographic, Urban and Environmental Studies
• Wendell Wallach, Carnegie-Uehiro Fellow at Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, Co-Director of the Artificial Intelligence & Equality Initiative (AIEI)
• Sandra Jovchelovitch, Director, Social and Cultural Psychology Programme, London School of Economics and Political Science, Fellow at the British Psychological Society (online)
• N’Dri T. Assié-Lumumba, Professor, Africana Studies and Research Center, College of Arts and Sciences, Cornell University, and former President of the MOST Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) (online)
• Ori Heffetz, Associate Professor, S. C. Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University (online)

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The BRIDGES Coalition are delighted to announce that we are partnering with the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS) on its 6th International Conference on Future Education, with a focus on Education for Human Security, taking place 7-9 March 2023.

Click here to learn more about our two featured events

As noted by the primary organizers of the conference, WAAS, the 6th International Conference on Future Education is being conducted in support of HS4A, a global campaign to generate awareness and elicit active support and participation from all major sectors and sections of global society in an unprecedented effort to release and mobilize the untapped energies and capacities of humanity in pursuit of human security for all.

Other international partners in the WAAS conference focused this year on Education for Human Security include the the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, the World University Consortium, the Jena Declaration, the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, the Black Sea Universities Network and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network for Europe.

Visit the conference website through the link below for additional information and details on how to register. The conference is free and can be followed entirely online.

The BRIDGES Coalition was delighted to come aboard the LearningPlanet Festival as a partner this year. With over 600 events worldwide, the 4th edition of the festival gathered close to 60,000 online participants from 191 countries. Our coalition organised and co-/sponsored a number of these online events, together with the The Club of Rome, Future Earth, People&Planet, UNESCO and numerous BRIDGES member organisations, key partners and hubs.

The Coalition is already beginning to explore how we can build on these valued partnerships, working along with Learning Planet Institute and the LearningPlanet Alliance and our many partners and member organizations at the intersections of science and community co-production of knowledge and education for planetary health and wellbeing. Read more about the festival and its outcomes on the blog from the organizers of the LearningPlanet Festival!

The Interim Executive Group of the BRIDGES Coalition met at UNESCO headquarters on Friday 20 January in the office of UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences, Gabriela Ramos. The purpose of the meeting was to work through final provisions of the the coalition’s longer term governance structures, as reflected in the BRIDGES Rules of Procedure.

Attending this meeting, in addition to ADG Ramos, were Luiz Oosterbeek, President of the International Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences (CIPSH); Steven Hartman, Executive Director of BRIDGES and officer of the Humanities for the Environment (HfE) global observatory network; Mariagrazia Squicciarini, Chief of the Executive Office and Acting Director of Division for Social Policies; Pedro Monreal Gonzalez, Acting Chief of Section for Management of Social Transformations and Foresight; and Iulia Sevciuc of the Management of Social Transformations (MOST) intergovernmental programme secretariat.

Key agreements were reached among the BRIDGES founding partners (UNESCO, CIPSH and HfE) in consultation with the MOST secretariat and the UNESCO Social and Human Sciences Executive Office, setting the stage for endorsement of the BRIDGES Rules of Procedure in the coming weeks in the Interim Executive Group. Among other things, this will set in motion the convening of a permanent Governing Council for the BRIDGES Coalition.

The UK Hub of the UNESCO BRIDGES Coalition at University of Wales Trinity Saint David launched  in an event that brought together academia, community projects, art, gaming, and indigenous knowledge.

The launch event, entitled E(e)arth, took place in The Reading Room of the Alex Building in Swansea, Wales on the 2nd of November 2022.

The launch introduced the aims, values and opportunities of the UK Hub by showcasing projects that use the strengths of the Humanities to generate innovation in thinking and action.

The launch was not a passive affair. It was active, informal and required the audience’s engagement. If we are to move into new ways of understanding, we need bold action. The launch responded to that call.

E(e)arth

The projects presented at the launch demonstrate different approaches and methods of knowing the Earth (and earth).

1. Munekan Masha: Reviving Water in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta

The first project was devised and is led, by a group of indigenous people from Colombia who decided to teach conventional environmental scientists their previously unrecorded methods of land regeneration. This project is presented by Prof. Alan Ereira, UWTSD, the Tairona Heritage Trust (THT) and a representative of the Kogi people, Jose Manuel Mamatacan who was trained as emissary by his people to be able to join the launch event.

2. What it is to be there

The second project presented is an interdisciplinary collaboration with a Welsh artist, Helen Acklam, who asks questions about being in the earth and uses the arts to work with the soil and explore relationships with the taken for granted lives underfoot.

3. Serious Gaming: can games save the world?

The third project, presented by GamEngage, demonstrates the imaginative and creative power of playing games to seek solutions to environmental issues. Games encourage positivity and allow players to collaborate to harness tensions and frustrations to untangle complex problems around sustainability and climate solutions.