5th Sustainability Conference

The annual sustainability conference
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The environmental council of the University of Akureyri invites everybody to the 5th Sustainability Conference at the University of Akureyri - the date will be announced on this website, soon. Participation is free of charge. The conference will be held in a hybrid format, to accommodate both on-site interaction but also online, environmentally friendly participation of international speakers and guests. The conference's language is English.

This year, for the first time, the conference will be co-hosted by the Stefansson Arctic Institute. We welcome especially abstracts about human-environment relations in the Circumpolar Arctic, but submissions of global relevance are highly encouraged, as well. Traditionally, our conference highlights research by international and national experts on climate change effects, climate change mitigation, and adaptation, waste management, and marine conservation. The deadline for abstracts is the 14.01.2025. We are happy to announce the confirmed keynote lecture "Transformative Innovation for better Climate Change Adaptation: Enabling Conditions and Future Perspectives" held by Claire Nauwelaers and Richard Harding.

ABSTRACT 

Transformative Innovation for better Climate Change Adaptation: Enabling Conditions and Future Perspectives

Lessons from empirical studies on five European territories 

There is a growing scientific consensus that Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) – the process of adjustment to climate-induced impacts, underway or expected - is not being implemented at anything like the scale, depth and speed needed to avoid dangerous climate-related risks. Moreover, due to the complex impacts of climate change, their strong interrelatedness and profound societal implications, solutions adopted in the past to address weather-induced disasters are unlikely to work well in the future.

The thesis of an analysis on this subject undertaken for the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), between December 2022 and April 2024, was that transformative - even radical - adaptation solutions are now needed to avoid much worse climate-related damage and higher costs in the future. The key question investigated was: ‘How to harness the potential of the emerging “Transformative Innovation” paradigm to bring about more effective CCA strategies and actions?’ The two independent experts who carried out this study developed a conceptual framework, which postulates that eight key features of ‘Transformative Innovation’ can act as enabling conditions for the design and implementation of CCA strategies of the necessary high transformative ambition.

The experts went on to deploy this framework on empirical studies for JRC based on field research in five European territories: the region of Gorenjska, in Slovenia; the whole of Iceland; the Northern Netherlands; the City of Turku, in Southwest Finland; and the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, in France. Their present paper, which is not itself funded by JRC, compares the strengths and weaknesses of these five territories’ progress towards fulfilment of the eight enabling conditions. The paper details the considerable variation between these territories’ respective performance in this regard, and concludes that none of them can be said to be fully successful. For each enabling condition, the authors then suggest numerous practical ways forward, which could potentially be followed by any territory seeking to move decisively towards genuinely ‘Transformative CCA’.

We also welcome sponsors/exhibitors, online or on-site, and will consider digital material that can be included in the online program (breaks) or exhibitions on-site next to our break buffet in the main entrance hallway of the University (with the option to keep exhibitions there for the week before and after the conference).

If you want to participate, contribute as a speaker, or sponsor our event in 2025, please send your information through this form.

This year we will also hand out for the first time the Stefansson student sustainability award, worth 40.000ISK. The application to the award is open to students who study at or graduated from the University of Akureyri within the years 2022-2025. For applying you need to send us your thesis (can be the non-final version, no need for having already a grade). The award is open to any field of science, any department of the University of Akureyri. The thesis research needs to be related to sustainability, the environment, or climate change. The awardees are expected to give a talk about their thesis. In order to apply, please 1) register and 2) send your thesis to yvonne@unak.is. Deadline for the thesis award is the same as the abstract deadline 14.01.2025.

Join us for a day of exploration and collaboration on sustainability!

Participation is free and the conference will be held both on-site and online. 

Contact

For additional inquiries, please contact the conference organization committee below:

Programs from recent years

1st Sustainability Conference 
2nd Sustainability Conference and Recordings from the 2nd Sustainability Conference 
3rd Sustainability Conference and Recordings from the 3nd Sustainability Conference
4th Sustainability Conference and Recordings from the 4th Sustainability Conference