Bio
Navnita Behera
Navnita Chadha Behera teaches in the department of political science at Delhi University, India, and is a former visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution, Washington DC.
She is the author of State, Identity and Violence: Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh, and has written extensively on South Asia.
Hans Guenter Brauch
Hans Gunter Brauch is Chairman of Peace Research and European Security Studies (AFES-PRESS), an international non-profit scientific society.
Ursula Oswald Spring
Ursula Oswald Spring is a professor and researcher at the Regional Centre of Multidisciplinary Research at the National University of Mexico (CRIM-UNAM). She was the first General Attorney (Ombudswomen) for Environment in Latin America and the first Minister of Environmental Development in Mexico in the State of Morelos. She has a PhD in Social Anthropology with speciality in Environment (1978), a Master in Psychology (1972) and BE in Philosophy, Psychology and Anthropology (1969) from University of Zuerich, Switzerland. She is the first MunichRe Chair on Social Vulnerability (2005/2006) at the United National University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS). She is chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of AFES-PRESS. She is founding member and was Secretary General of the Colegio de Tlaxcala, a PhD program on sustainable regional development.
As President of IPRA (1988-2000) and Secretary General of CLAIP (Latin American Peace Research, 2002-2006) she linked the concept of Human, Gender and Environmental Security (HUGE) with peace studies, non-violent conflict resolution and sustainable productive processes.
Frans Verhagen
Frans C. Verhagen, M.Div., M.I.A., Ph.D. is a sustainability sociologist with Earth and Peace Education Associates International (EPE) in New York City. He directs its Sustainability Research and Education Department. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor Sustainable Communities at Pace University in NY where he was the Visiting Scholar on Sustainable Communities in the Spring 2006. He also is the Sustainability Fellow of the Green Institute in Washington, D.C. and represents the International Peace Research Association at the UN Headquarters.
He developed the Earth Community School model of secondary education, the topic of Saturday's one hour workshop, while he was a Regents Earth Science with the NYC Board of Education in the 1990s. The model is based upon the organizing concept of contextual sustainability and includes as one of its components the efficient use of resources of the school itself. The model was published in Green Teacher, Fall, 1999.
Encyclopædia Britannica Article
- global warming
Increase in the global average surface temperature resulting from enhancement of the greenhouse effect, primarily by air pollution. In 2007 the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecasted that by 2100 global average surface temperatures would increase 3.2–7.2 °F (1.8–4.0 °C), depending on a range of scenarios for greenhouse gas emissions, and stated that it was now 90 percent certain that most of the warming observed over the previous half century could be attributed to greenhouse gas emissions produced by human activities (i.e., industrial processes and transportation). Many scientists predict that such an increase in temperature would cause polar ice caps and mountain glaciers to melt rapidly, significantly raising the levels of coastal waters, and would produce new patterns and extremes of drought and rainfall, seriously disrupting food production in certain regions. Other scientists maintain that such predictions are overstated. The 1992 Earth Summit and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change attempted to address the issue of global warming, but in both cases the efforts were hindered by conflicting national economic agendas and disputes between developed and developing nations over the cost and consequences of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.
- global warming on britannica.com
© 2010 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
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