Open - IHDP - United Nations University

The Open Meeting - a Platform to present the Synthesis Process of GECHS and IT
Human Security
in an Era of Global
Change – The GECHS
Synthesis Process
Linda Sygna, Kirsten Ulsrud and Karen O’Brien
Photo: UN Photo/Logan Abassi
The relationship between social processes and grow-
ing environmental challenges is at the core of research with-
in the Global Environmental Change and Human Security
(GECHS) project. GECHS research places environmental
changes within larger socioeconomic and political contexts,
and focuses on the way diverse social processes such
as globalization, poverty, disease, and conflict, combine
with global environmental change to affect human security.
GECHS research recognizes the need to move human beings
and societies to the center of global environmental change
research—an approach that is closely related to the theme
of the Open Meeting 2009, “The Social Challenges of Global
Change.”
Human security can be interpreted as the freedom to
take actions that promote well-being in response to changing
environmental conditions. Key themes that have been investigated
by GECHS researchers include the effects of global
environmental change on water resources; the role of governance;
linkages between environmental change and food security;
conflict and cooperation in transboundary resource
management; linkages between environmental change and
population displacement and migration; gender dimensions
of environmental change; resource scarcity and conflict;
multiple stressors, differential vulnerability and adaptive capacity;
the role of culture, values, and worldviews in understanding
and responding to environmental change; climate
change and human security implications in cities and coastal
urban areas; linkages between environmental change and
poverty; and many other themes. The Open Meeting 2009
will serve as an arena for stocktaking on research related to
these themes, and for presenting GECHS perspectives and
research on global environmental change and human security
to the wider human dimensions community.
Below, we showcase some of the perspectives and
themes that will be presented in 15 GECHS sessions at the
Open Meeting, using three broad, interrelated streams of
knowledge that have been emerging over the years within
GECHS. The GECHS project is currently in a synthesis
phase, whereby ten years of research findings are being consolidated,
synthesized and disseminated. Progress has been
made in three areas. First, there have been important advances
on the conceptualization of human security, particularly
in terms of framing and understanding the implications
of environmental change for individuals and communities.
Second, a large body of empirical research has been created
on how various aspects of human security are influenced
by environmental change, and how multiple processes of
change threatens social, human and environmental rights.
The third broad stream of research within the GECHS proj-
42 IHDP Update 1.2009