The 114th meeting of the ISSC’s Executive Committee was held in Montréal on 14 – 15 May 2012, amidst local student demonstrations against dramatic increases in University fees.

The Executive Committee met in Montreal’s Palais des Congrés, chosen as the venue for the 2013 World Social Science Forum on the theme of “Social Transformation and the Digital Age”.

The Executive Committee reviewed progress and confirmed the focus of the ISSC’s flagship programs,

• The World Social Science Forums (Montreal 2013, Durban 2015)
• The World Social Science Report (next due in 2013 on Global Environmental Change)
• The World Social Science Fellows Programme, the new (2012) capacity-building venture, with cross-disciplinary workshops in gestation on “Possible Cities”, ‘Land and Oceans”, and “Public Health Policy”.

The Executive Committee affirmed the need to continue with the ISSC’s Special Focus Activities on Global Environmental Change, linking this work going forward with the Future Earth initiative, and in continuing collaboration with ISSC partners, such as ICSU. (A more detailed report on the ISSC ExCom discussions will be available here soon).

The Executive Committee used the occassion to inspect the calm and spacious Palais, a tried-and-trusted conference venue for large-scal fora, while outside, protestors and police occupied the streets of central Montreal.

In the wings of the ISSC Executive Committee, teh winner of teh 2011 Stein Rokkan Award, James McGuire, presented his prize-winning work entitled “Wealth, Health, and Democracy in East Asia and Latin America” which the panel of judges described as a “milestone of scientific discovery”.

The International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) proudly announces the launch of the Inclusive Wealth Report 2012 (IWR 2012) at the Rio+20 Conference in Brazil.

The report presents a framework that offers a long-term perspective on human well-being and sustainability, based on a comprehensive analysis of nations´ productive base and their link to economic development.

The IWR 2012 was developed on the notion that current economic production indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP) and the Human Development Index (HDI) are insufficient, as they fail to reflect the state of natural resources or ecological conditions, and focus exclusively on the short term, without indicating whether national policies are sustainable.

The IWR 2012 features an index that measures the wealth of nations by looking into a country’s capital assets, including manufactured, human and natural capital, and its corresponding values: the Inclusive Wealth Index (IWI). Results show changes in inclusive wealth from 1990 to 2008, and include a long-term comparison to GDP for an initial group of 20 countries worldwide, which represent 72% of the world GDP and 56% of the global population.

The IWR will be published every two years and will offer policy-makers a practical framework for assessing the state of a country’s productive base. It can also provide guidance on which forms of capital investment should be made to ensure sustainable development. More broadly, the report will be of use to scholars and practitioners working in economics, development studies, environmental and other fields.

The Inclusive Wealth Report 2012 is a joint initiative of UNU-IHDP and UNEP in collaboration with the UN-Water Decade Programme on Capacity Development (UNW-DPC) and the Natural Capital Project.

The Inclusive Wealth Report 2012 will be launched at a joint UNU-IHDP and UNEP side event at the Rio+20 Conference in Brazil on June 17 and will be available for download on the IHDP website. A hard copy version will be published by Cambridge University Press.

ISSC Executive Committee Member Katsuya Kodama of IPRA (the International Peace Research Association, an ISSC Member Association) has won the Ahimsa (non-violence) Award for International Peace.
This prestigious award is to honour Professor Kodama for his peace research and writings, and for his commitment to building a healthy and nonviolent society.
The award, bestowed by the Anuvrat Global Organisation, will be presented by the President of India at a special ceremony in June this year.

April 2012