Background

The 2012 Berlin Conference on Evidence for Sustainable Development was the 11th conference in the well established series of European Conferences on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change.

This successful conference series began in 2001 with the first Berlin Conference and was complemented by the 2007 Amsterdam Conference on Earth System Governance. Since then, the conferences were held alternating every year in Berlin and Amsterdam.

The conference series generally aims at:

• establishing and developing a renowned institution for international exchange among social scientists dealing with global environmental change,
• supporting exchange especially with scientists from developing countries,
• fostering the integration of German and European research into international and global research communities, such as the International Human Dimensions Program of Global Environmental Change by transferring international research agendas to Germany and Europe and providing German as well as European researchers with the opportunity to present their research to the international research community,
• facilitating the integration of European research projects in order to assist in shaping a European research area in the field of the human dimensions of global environmental change,
• stimulating problem-oriented and interdisciplinary research by organising communication between political science and its neighbour disciplines as well as between scientists and decision makers given that transformations to more sustainable societies require an intense communication between disciplines as well as between practitioners and scholars, and
• creating internationally recognised publications.

Previous Conferences

The following topics have been addressed so far in the previous ten conferences of the series:

• “Global Environmental Change and the Nation State” in 2001; Berlin
• “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition – The Challenge for Social Science” in 2002, Berlin
• “Governance for Industrial Transformation” in 2003, Berlin
• “Greening of Policies: Interlinkages and Policy Integration” in 2004, Berlin
• “International Organisations and Global Environmental Governance” in 2005, Berlin
• “Resource Policies: Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Equity” in 2006, Berlin
• “Earth System Governance: Theories and Strategies for Sustainability” in 2007, Amsterdam
• “Long-Term Policies: Governing Social-Ecological Change” in 2008, Berlin
• “Earth System Governance: People, Places, and the Planet” in 2009, Amsterdam
• “Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change”, in 2010, Berlin