Climate 2008

Web-Conference on climate change aims to involve 1 million participants

Climate change is currently one of the most discussed topics in politics, which is no surprise since its consequences are threatening modern society as such. It is likely that Internet will play a major role to inform people about the latest scientific findings and the developments to be expected in the near future. Because of the interactive nature of the web it is at the same time considered to be the lead channel to launch “save-the-world” like campaigns or to develop coping strategies involving thousands or even millions of people. In other words the climate change may become an important issue for eParticipation projects.

We are already aware of some of these projects and will try to continuously report about this theme. (If you know additional projects in that domain, please let us know!). The first one I would like to introduce is the web conference “Climate 2008” (www.klima2008.net) which will take place between November 3^rd and 7^th this year. The project is organised by the research centre Applications of Life Sciences of the University for Applied Science in the city of Hamburg (Germany) and supported by the United Nations Environment Programme.

The Conference will be organised around four main categories of papers:

• Category 1: Papers on scientific aspects of climate change including on modelling, forecasts and data analysis, generated by interdisciplinary teams.
• Category 2:Papers on social aspects on climate change, including economics, policy‐making and social impacts.
• Category 3: Papers on education, communication and training on climate change.
• Category 4: Papers on regional / international initiatives, projects and other efforts involving different groups and stakeholders.

Selected papers will be available on the conference web site and all registered users are invited to discuss the papers directly with the authors and all other participants. Users can further more vote on specific issues, take part in expert chats or follow the video podcasts.

Since the conference languages will be German and English, Prof. Walter Leal who is heading the research centre, expects that interested people from all over the world will participate in this event. According to an report in the print magazine “Always On” the organisers are expecting up to one million participants. This would be a really huge number and a hallmark for eParticipation projects at the same time. But are these expectations realistic? What do you think?

Tags: climate change, eParticipation