UNESCO-International Council for Science

In July, a small International Council for Science (ICSU) delegation headed by the Executive Director Deliang Chen met with Gretchen Kalonji, the new UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences, and her colleagues at UNESCO. Discussions centered on potential areas of cooperation between the two organizations, including the initiative emerging from the ICSU visioning process, Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR), the new Program on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS), and science education. It was agreed that there is potential to hold joint regional workshops throughout 2011 in preparation for the UN Earth Summit in 2012 (Rio+20), and that ICSU and UNESCO need to show leadership regarding the contribution of PECS and DIVERSITAS to the new Intergovernmental Science-Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).