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SCP:
Conclave of Thought Leaders, New York, 11-12 May 2009

Conclave of Thought Leaders: The Future of Sustainable Development

11-12 May 2009
New York

Background

The conclave will be held on 11-12 May at the United Nations, to coincide with the 17th session of the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD). The afternoon of May 12 would be allocated to a round table discussion with invited Ministers and heads of delegations to CSD-17, Heads of UN agencies, and representatives of civil society organizations.

Objectives

The meeting has three main objectives:

1- Substance

To provide an occasion to review and assess:

  • the current state of conceptual thinking and applied research on sustainable development;
  • the impact of two decades of sustainable development research on policy and practice;
  • future sustainable development challenges, and the strategic direction of policy research in order to enhance its social relevance, policy impact, and capacity for integrating across disciplinary and sectoral boundaries;

2- Process

To provide an opportunity to discuss more effective ways of communicating these findings, including:

  • direct interaction with high-level politicians gathered for CSD, as well as Major Groups;
  • the option of establishing a formal network of policy research institutions to engage with and support the inter-governmental process;
  • identification of a common research agenda, which could be pursued through collaborative or complementary research programs; and
  • assessment of how such a network could enable more effective use of the range of communications instruments deployed by the research community, including coverage of sustainable development issues in web-based portals (e.g., wikipedia, knol, or EoE), journals, books on sustainable development, webcasts and webinars, and other media.

3- Immediate

To use the opportunity to review the state of knowledge on matters before the current and forthcoming sessions of the CSD, and to provide strategic guidance on these from a sustainable development perspective.

More details available in the Concept Note.

Meeting Details