Organizers: Urbanization and Global Environmental Change (UGEC), The Southeast Asia Regional Committee for START (SARCS) and National Taipei University (NTPU), Taiwan
Sponsor: National Science Council, Taiwan
I. Introduction
Climate change is now widely recognized as a major environmental challenge facing the world. The impacts of climate change, including increases in extreme weather events, elevated temperatures, shifts in the timing and intensity of precipitation and sea level rise, which together are expected to result in biodiversity loss declines in water availability and supply, and threats to urban areas where people, resources, and infrastructure are concentrated. At the same time, between 2007 and 2050, the world urban population is expected to increase by more than three billion. The majority of this growth will occur in Asia, where current urbanization levels are low at approximately 45%. The increased scale of urbanization will be most extraordinary in Southeast Asia, expanding into agricultural lands, forests, and other natural land covers.
Spatial planning is increasingly playing an important role by protecting climate, providing energy efficient settlements, and minimizing risk from disasters. However, urban planning education in Asia generally lacks curricula to train planners with capacity to cope with climate change. Despite evidence showing that some cities in Asia are beginning to integrate climate change into spatial planning strategies, progress has been slow. The rhetoric and principles of integrating climate change with urban spatial planning still needs to be translated into practice.
Given the rapid population and urban growth in Asian cities, there is an urgent need to understand how climate change is likely to affect these regions, and what viable mitigation and adaptation strategies may be taken to reduce their vulnerability and increase their resilience to climate change. This training workshop is funded by the National Science Council of Taiwan, and is designed as a follow-up workshop to a workshop taking place in November 10-15, 2011 at the National Taipei University, Taipei, Taiwan. The event is collaboratively organized by National Taipei University, IHDP-UGEC (Urbanization and Global Environmental Change, an IHDP core project), and SARCS (Southeast Asia Regional Committee for START). The workshop is open to young scholars from SARCS member countries and scholars with experience on Asia. The workshop will focus on urban spatial planning in response to climate change, including mitigation and adaptation strategies in Asian cities. The goal for the second workshop is to help developing climate change curriculums for urban planning institutions.
II. Objectives
The purpose of the training workshop is to bring together young scholars of urban planning related fields from Asia to work with international experts on urban mitigation and adaptation to climate change. Specifically, the training workshop will cover the following topics:
- Urban form for mitigating climate change
- Adapting to climate change; the role of spatial planning
- Local governance regimes for mitigation and adaptation
Instructors and participants will be organized into group discussions and be guided to accomplish their development of climate change curriculum in planning department as well as synthesis (or research) papers. The objectives of the workshop include:
- 1) Review and share state of the art knowledge about climate change mitigation and adaptation in Asian cities;
- 2) Compare the responses of cities – mitigation and adaptation strategies to climate change – across different countries or regions in Asia;
- 3) Identify key issues and wide range of drivers of urban response to climate change in Asia;
- 4) Scientific (research and teaching) capacity development for young social scientists in the region on the topic of urban mitigation and adaptation to climate change, covering theoretical and applied perspectives and methodologies, and the sharing of international experiences and lessons;
- 5) Strengthening science-policy interactions with the target of building better local responses to climate change in cities of the region, promoting dialogue and creating partnerships between climate change scientists and planning faculties.
III. Program and Venue
The training workshop will be held from November 26-30 at National Taipei University in New Taipei City, Taiwan. The program of the workshop consists of lectures, discussion and writing sessions. Lectures on each sub-theme will be given by the instructors to provide the participants an overview on the subject. However, approximately two-third of the time will be allocated for discussion and writing. Participants will be divided into groups and will be organized to group discussions in which they will be guided to analyze, compare and integrate their studies, and accomplish group project on climate change curriculum and a paper at the end of the workshop.
IV. Instructors
Roger Bristow, Manchester University, U. K.
JoAnn Carmin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Shobhakar Dhakal, Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand
Shu-Li Huang, National Taipei University, Taiwan
Peter Marcotullio, Hunter College of the City University of New York,USA
Darryn McEvoy, RMIT University, Australia
Patricia Romero-Lankao, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Mexico
V. Participants
The training workshop is designed for young scholars (young faculties in the universities or research institution with a PhD degree acquired preferably within 4 years, or post-doc fellows) from SARCS member or other Asia countries in all relevant disciplines, particularly in urban planning and related disciplines. The travel and local expense of participants will be covered by the local organizer. All applicants have to provide a proposal stating their current research while submitting their applications. The applications will be reviewed by the instructors and a maximum number of 25 applicants will be selected to participate in the workshop.
To facilitate the group discussion and writing the paper during the workshop, each participant is required to provide some analytical or research results of his/her study prior to the training workshop and present the study at the training workshop. At the end of the workshop, participants are required to complete their proposed works (climate change curriculum and papers).
VI. Application Process
Complete applications must be submitted no later than July 31, 2012.
Applications received after this deadline or incomplete will not be considered. Decisions on the application will be communicated to all applicants by the end of August.
Application package is only accepted in an electronic file attached to an e-mail, including:
(A) A letter of intent
(B) Curriculum vitae (academic background, research interest and recent publications)
(C) The application form and a summary of current teaching and (or) research, downloadable from the website.
All materials (in PDF format) should be sent to Ms. Hui-Chen Lin at the following e-mail address: hclin.ntpu@gmail.com
VII. Language Requirement
The Training Workshop will be conducted in English and applicants must have good capability in both oral communication and writing in English language.
For further inquiries related to the training workshop please visit our website (http://www.sarcs.org/) or contact:
Ms. Hui-Chen Lin
National Taipei University
No. 151 University Rd.,
Sanshia District., New Taipei City 237, Taiwan
TEL: +886-2-8674-1111 ext.67347
FAX: +886-2-8671-8801
e-mail: hclin.ntpu@gmail.com