Welcome to Critical Mass – a forum to build research capacity to address climate change, poverty and development challenges
Evy Jørgensen and Siri EriksenThe 'Critical Mass – Building Research and Capacity to Address Climate Change, Poverty and Development Challenges' is a Norwegian forum of researchers and practitioners engaged in building research and capacity to address climate change, poverty and development challenges. The name reflects two key objectives:
• First, to forge dialogue and synergies between practitioners and researchers spread across diverse institutions in order to create a critical mass of experts confronting climate change, poverty and development challenges.
Critical Mass was established to create a meeting place for practitioners and academia, in order to exchange information and create cooperation. That is, it is aimed to contribute to create a stronger climate, poverty and development community that can draw on synergies in members’ fields of expertise to improve understanding, policies and practical actions. By linking researchers, practitioners and policy makers, we hope to foster policy relevant research and dialogue with policy processes, as well as reach out to a wider community.
• Second, to address as a group the need to think critically about the problem of climate change by identifying key emerging understanding, perspectives, questions and knowledge gaps.
Critical Mass is open to all interested researchers and practitioners. The members represent diverse views and perspectives – what we have in common is the understanding that climate change, poverty and development are intrinsically linked, and that there is an urgent need to address climate change as a development problem, requiring new policy approaches and interventions. We challenge current understanding of the climate change problem. For example, sometimes it is taken for granted exactly what the climate change problem is, without its multiple facets being well understood, which may lead to policies and actions that can actually aggravate the problem.
• Climate change is fundamentally a development problem, in that current development paths both create high emissions and vulnerable populations. There is a need to understand the nature of the challenge, and a need to make such understanding part of policies and practical solutions.
There are several perspectives and key debates regarding climate, poverty and development, that are important in developing such understanding. Highlighting these debates is especially important in Norway, which is heavily involved in development activities, both in aid, NGO activities and within research.
-- More about key debates and themes within the climate change, poverty and development field...
Photo: Evy Jørgensen
Updated: 15.01.13
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Climate Change, Poverty and Development
Evy Jørgensen (Webmaster)
evy.jorgensen [umb.no]
evy.jorgensen [umb.no]