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Earthquakes, floods, and weather extremes are among a range of societal hazards that are increasingly studied by national and international researchers, but the absence of international collaboration and coordination is increasingly leading to inefficiencies and lost opportunities. The world’s major funders of global change research are considering how best to align financial and human capital toward delivering the relevant knowledge that society will need in the 21st century. The Belmont Forum (named after the group’s first meeting venue in Maryland in 2009) meets twice a year and is composed of funding executives from Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Norway, South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Commission, together with the executive directors of the International Council for Science (ICSU) and International Social Sciences Council (ISSC).

The International Opportunities Fund National Annex for India is now available on the “National Information” page.

In the context of its Climate and Global Environmental Change Design Project, the International Social Science Council (ISSC) has worked with the support of Swedish Sida and the cooperation of key partners to develop a consolidated, global social science research agenda on climate and global environmental change.

The Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN) is inviting proposals under two separate programmes, the Annual Regional Call for Research Proposals (ARCP) Programme and the Scientific Capacity Building/Enhancement for Sustainable Development in Developing Countries (CAPaBLE) Programme, for funding from April 2013, and is able to provide a limited amount of financial support for research and capacity development activities that fall within its areas of interest.

One of PROVIA’s four initial activities is the revision of guidance on assessing vulnerability, impacts and adaptation to climate change.

A major five-day Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation for Sustainable Development will be held on 11-15 June 2012 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in the days just prior to the Rio+20 Conference. The Forum will bring together leading international scientists and policy-makers to explore the key role of interdisciplinary science and innovation in the transition to sustainable development, a green economy and poverty eradication. The aim is to help establish the research, technology and policy agendas that will be needed after Rio+20.

The Belmont Forum, recognizing the valuable contribution of the social sciences to the understanding of and response to global environmental change, invited the ISSC to represent the international social science community as a member of the forum in January of 2010. Shortly after joining the Forum, the need to bring together a global group of representatives of the disciplines embodied in the social sciences in order to critically reflect on the Belmont Forum White Paper, and identify ways to mobilize the broader social science communities to increase the production of social science research relevant to the Belmont Challenge and global environmental change more broadly.

The purpose of the forum was to explore the role of African universities in promoting education on climate change adaptation in the areas of research, curriculum development and teacher training, as well as to examine issues of how to more fully engage civil society on adaptation through education aimed outside the university.

The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) is organizing an International Conference on the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment CORDEX to be held at ICTP, Trieste, Italy from 21 – 26 March 2011. CORDEX entails the completion and intercomparison of ensembles of different regional climate model (RCM) experiments using the same domains, resolution and lateral boundary condition fields from either analyses of observations or global climate models. The RCM simulations are then expected to be compared to analogous downscaling experiments with statistical/empirical techniques. Specific sets of analysis metrics for both, model validation and assessment of projections, are being developed for each region.