Urban Futures and Human and Ecosystem Wellbeing----Shanghai Advanced Research Institute,Chinese Academy of Sciences

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Urban Futures and Human and Ecosystem Wellbeing

date： 2010-11-22

Urban Futures and Human and Ecosystem Wellbeing Symposium was held from Oct.26 to Oct.30, 2010 in Shanghai. This Symposium was jointly sponsored by the Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE).
The symposium through simultaneous workshops covered a range of themes related to sustainable urban futures, such as Eco-city planning, Urban, rural and natural systems, Urban heritage, Ecological architecture, Urban governance. It brought together scientists, researchers, planners and managers who are concerned with and committed to creating urban ecosystems that are conscious of their local, regional and global ecological footprints, economically vibrant and socially entrepreneurial; and those who can draw from the global heritage of urban pasts and presents to build city futures that are sustainable and ready to face the challenges of mitigating and adapting to climate change.

UNESCO-MAB is an interdisciplinary and intergovernmental programme launched in 1971 and dedicated to research, education, experimentation and learning to simultaneously promote human and ecosystem well-being. The symposium also served to reinvent the urban ecosystem mission of the UNESCO-MAB Programme and its partners that include SCOPE, CAS and others with the purpose of facilitating collaboration among researchers and practitioners to promote energy-efficient, low emission cities that are centres of social enterprise, cultural creativity and human wellbeing. Through their networks, the partners seek to promote action-research and learning in partnership with UNESCO biosphere reserves to experiment and test conditions for the development of vibrant ecological economies that continuously strive to minimize urban carbon footprints.

Prof. Yonglong Lu awarded SCOPE-ZHONGYU Prizes (Life Achievement Awards on Environmental Sciences and Young Scientist Awards on Environmental Issues) to some scientists during the opening ceremony of the symposium. This is the first time for SCOPE to award this kind of award.

Shanghai Declaration was issued on the closing ceremony of the symposium. The outputs of the symposium will help us to understand the problems we are facing today and to figure out the ways of strengthening the human capacity in the establishment of a sustainable eco-environment in the general contents of urbanization.