Autumn School « Global Forests – 2024 » – Forest Biodiversity: the ecology-social sciences dialogue.
Picture by Alain Audet from Pixabay
Please note that the Autumn School will take place at the Maison Française in Oxford from 14 to 17 October 2024.
Download the full description and the application form here.
Global Forests: new multidisciplinary challenges for forest management
"Global Forests" is an autumn school for doctoral and post-doctoral students whose research focuses on forest issues and coming from all scientific disciplines. The autumn school aims to offer a time for scientific exchange and training to a multi-disciplinary group of young scientists. A large place is given to forestry issues in the South and early carrier researchers from the South are strongly invited to participate.
Conveners: GIP ECOFOR; Maison Française d’Oxford; Higher Education Research and Innovation Department of the French Embassy in London; In partnership with UMIFRE “Institut Français de Pondichéry”
Organisation Committee: Maya Leroy (AgroParisTech), Nicolas Picard (ECOFOR), Pascal Marty (CNRS et U. Paris 1, MFO), Pierre-Michel Forget (Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle), Guillaume Lescuyer (CIRAD) , Paul Bresteaux (ECOFOR)
Scientific Committee: ECOFOR Scientific Committee
Context
Biodiversity conservation has become a major issue, placed on the global agenda in recent decades by a succession of international agreements. Recent research shows that biological diversity is in steep decline worldwide. According to IPBES, since 1900 the average abundance of native species in most major biomes has declined by an average of 20%. Forest biodiversity has not been spared, particularly that of tropical forests, many of which are considered biodiversity hotspots. Biological diversity underpins the health of the ecosystems of the planet, as well as the services they provide to human communities. Preserving them is therefore an critical challenge. This degradation of biodiversity continues despite the many initiatives taken to address it (2010 Aichi agreements). This observation highlights how difficult it is to set public policy tools to address biodiversity challenges. It also shows that preserving biodiversity involves many socio-economic and political issues, over and above efforts to gain a better understanding of its dynamics. It therefore seems necessary to develop an interdisciplinary approach to biodiversity issues, bringing together ecological and social sciences. Academic thinking has already taken steps in this direction, for instance with the socio-ecosystem concept. This trend deserves to be supported: that's the ambition of this autumn school, whose aim is to bring together doctoral students from a variety of disciplines to explore and develop new areas of research.
Objectives
In this context, the GIP Ecofor and its partners are organising an autumn school for PhD students and post-doctoral fellows:
- focused on contemporary fundamental and applied problems in forests,
- including all type of forests,
- cross-disciplinary,
- involving students from institutions in the South and the North.
The objective is to bring together an international and interdisciplinary group of students and to make possible :
1. A reflection on biodiversity issues, management tools, knowledge acquisition and development, monitoring and assessment systems, practices and usages;
2. Exchanges of experience;
3. A circulation of theoretical and technical models.
This autumn school is supported by several institutions:
1. The GIP ECOFOR, a multi-partner transversal network whose objectives are the production and dissemination of knowledge, and support for public policies on all subjects related to forests and timber sectors and non-timber forest products sector. Tropical forests are a central issue for several members of GIP ECOFOR such as CIRAD, IRD, AgroParisTech, CNRS and the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle;
2. Units of the UMIFRE network, whose governing bodies are the CNRS and the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs: Maison Française d'Oxford-MFO and Institut Français de Pondichéry (IFP) ;
3. The Higher Education, Research and Innovation Department of the French Embassy in the United Kingdom.
