Deadline: 23-Jan-23
Submissions are now open for AF2023, the 7th Adaptation Futures international conference, being held October 2-6, 2023, in a hybrid format, with the main conference location at the Palais des congrès de Montréal in Montréal, Québec, Canada.
Adaptation Futures is the flagship event of the World Adaptation Science Program (WASP). It is the premier international climate change adaptation conference series where practitioners, policymakers, researchers and academics from across the world gather to network, collaborate, learn and inspire!
Adaptation Futures 2023 is significant as it is being held for the first time in a hybrid format , potentially including a multi-hub format to acknowledge their responsibility as a climate community to “walk the talk” on climate action. It also seeks to attract more Global South delegates than ever before to the conference and forefront developing country adaptation contexts. Adaptation Futures 2023 emphasizes:
- Learning from Indigenous, local knowledges and voices in climate change adaptation research, policies, practices and actions around the world
- Accelerating the adoption of transformative adaptation for long-term resilience
- Bringing marginalized voices, especially from the Global South to the forefront of climate conferencing in pursuit of climate justice, equity, diversity and inclusion
- Accelerating momentum towards the Global Goal on Adaptation and the Global Stocktake and building on action to implement effective adaptation
Themes
- Learning from Indigenous and local peoples’ knowledges and expertise in adaptation
- Indigenous Peoples have been stewards of the lands, waters and oceans for thousands of years, anticipating and responding to climate variability and change. How do they integrate Indigenous knowledges and other knowledge holders’ experiences for long-term resilience?
- Dealing with multiple risks: Compound, cascading, crossborder climate change risks.
- People deal with many challenges at the same time, and climate change is only one of the stressors. How to account for the complexity and the interactions among multiple drivers of climate risk and vulnerabilities when identifying and implementing actions?
- Making adaptation choices: managing trade-offs and seeking effective adaptation
- Integrated perspectives are crucial to promoting adaptation choices that value diversity and reduce maladaptation. How do they enable integrated assessment for systemic and transformational adaptation and sustaining long-term resilience?
- When they can no longer adapt
- Adaptation (and mitigation) efforts will not be sufficient to address the complexity of all climate risks and vulnerabilities. So, what should they do when adaptive capacity is no longer enough to deal with climate challenges and to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?
- Who wins, who loses, who decides: Equity & justice in adaptation
- The impacts of climate change are disproportionately experienced by marginalized and vulnerable groups. Efforts to support adaptation must therefore grapple with profound questions of ethics, equity and justice.
- The power of nature for climate action
- Human and natural systems are deeply interconnected. More effort is needed to fully unpack the climate-nature-society nexus, and to understand the enabling potential of naturecentered approaches to support adaptation.
- Teaching and learning adaptation in a changing climate
- Education systems must support effective learning about adaptation in a world where climate change is a reality for many. How can teaching and learning inspire hope, embrace a plurality of knowledge, and balance the realities (and grief) of the climate crisis?
- Inclusive adaptation governance and finance: how do they get there?
- Suitable governance mechanisms, effective and inclusive decision-making processes, enabling institutional context and finance are critical for implementing, accelerating and sustaining climate responses and Climate Resilient Development. How do they get there?
Proposal for Sessions
- To promote knowledge exchange and co-learning for actionable solutions, they encourage other submission formats other than traditional paper and poster presentations. Three types of sessions will be offered at the Adaptation Futures 2023 conference:
- Knowledge sharing sessions (‘one way’): To disseminate information through a one-way process of sharing knowledge. These sessions are presentation-based to translate and communicate knowledge and ideas that help people make sense of and apply information.
- Knowledge exchange sessions (‘two way’): To disseminate information through a two-way process of sharing knowledge. These sessions are discussion-based to focus on translate and communicate knowledge and ideas that help people make sense of and apply information; To facilitate informal dialogues, collective learning, and innovation for system-level change.
- Knowledge co-production sessions (building new knowledge together): To improve knowledge use in decision-making through more of a two-way process; To engage in negotiating, networking, collaborating and managing relationships and processes; To foster action and change through a co-production approach to making use of the existing stock of knowledge.
Eligibility Criteria
- Their main criteria for selection will be quality, relevance, diversity and inclusivity.
- They particularly welcome sessions that:
- Consider gender, equity, accessibility, and social inclusion concerns
- Facilitate dialogue between research and government, practitioners, civil society, private sector, international organizations and foundations
- Contribute to a diverse and balanced program that focuses on solutions and innovations
- Consider the inclusion of Indigenous and local knowledge in adaptation processes
- Make adaptation a core element of sustainable development, investment and planning.
- Contribute to a conference program with a wide range of topics, stakeholders, scales and regions
- Showcase examples (case studies, tools, good practices and why they matter, etc.) or research that are internationally applicable
- Involve a partner organization from two or more different countries, organizations or adaptation community.
Submission Guidelines
- Abstracts may be submitted in English or French. The submission must be made in the language of presentation at the conference.
- Submitter must be the lead presenter of the abstract or chair of the session.
- Abstracts must follow the official template in Word format, per submission type.
- Submissions must be in Arial font, size 11.
- Submissions may include up to 1 image or table (maximum 10MB)
- Please only use standard abbreviations or define them in full.
- Accuracy is the responsibility of the author. Abstracts will be published as submitted. Please ensure that all abstracts are carefully proofread before upload.
For more information, visit https://adaptationfutures.com/program/#Submit
