Symposium aims to connect sustainability knowledge and action

Researchers from the Deakin University-led sustainability science initiatives Planet-A and the Local SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) Project are organising a symposium at the upcoming EcoSummit 2020, in June this year on Queensland’s Gold Coast.

The EcoSummit conference series was founded in 1996 in Copenhagen as a ‘forum for scientists, practitioners, and policy-makers working across disciplines to solve the integrated environmental, social, and economic problems facing the world today’. This is the 6th International EcoSummit Congress. This year's theme is ‘Building a sustainable and desirable future: Adapting to a changing land and sea-scape’.

The Deakin symposium will focus on the topic of connecting sustainability knowledge and action at the local level. In conjunction with the symposium, the researchers are also editing a Special Issue of the Springer journal Socio-Ecological Practice Research (SEPR).

Dr Enayat A. Moallemi, a research fellow from Deakin’s School of Life and Environmental Sciences and a member of the University’s Centre for Integrative Ecology, is one of the symposium organisers.

‘We are privileged that EcoSummit is coming to Australia and the opportunity it provides to discuss and promote our Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) research,’ Dr Moallemi says.

The researchers say the goal of the EcoSummit symposium is to bring new ideas from other leading scholars by providing scientific advice on shaping implementable actions and robust pathways for achieving local sustainability. They aim to enhance the science-policy interface by transcending the boundary between knowledge systems (where scientists operate) and the realm of actions (where policymakers and stakeholders sit) in sustainability science.

Keep up with news from the Planet-A Sustainability Science research group and the Local SDGs Project on Twitter: follow @_Planet_A and @LocalSDGs