Melissa Leach, STEPS Centre director, will be among the speakers at a side event at this 5-day conference in Rio de Janeiro.

The session is entitled “To Cross a Widening Gulf: New Patterns and Practices of Science for Sustainability”. The other speakers are Myanna Lahsen and Stephen Zehr.

About the session:

While scientists are warning that Earth’s vital processes are imperiled, threatening humans and their environments, societies have been reluctant to heed and change course. The widening gulf between knowledge and action impedes efforts to find and follow a sustainable pathway. This poses a grand challenge for interdisciplinary scholarship. Speakers will analyze the character and causes of this disconnect, and propose strategies to close it by creating, directing, and distributing knowledge and technology in new ways. Doing so will require integrating insights and approaches from the social sciences and humanities with those from the natural sciences and engineering.

Speakers:

• Myanna Lahsen, Center for Earth System Science, Brazilian Institute for Space Research, Brazil
• Melissa Leach, STEPS Centre
• Stephen Zehr, University of Southern Indiana, USA