From October 16 to 18, 2019 the Transformation 2019 meeting “Learning from Transformative Action and Thought” will take place, a biannual world meeting whose fourth version will be held for the first time in the southern hemisphere. Chaired by University of Chile academic Paulina Aldunce, the activity will bring together more than 200 researchers from different countries, representatives of the public world, NGOs, communities and activists to address this challenge.

To provide a platform for reciprocal learning between less developed and more developed contexts, and between researchers and practitioners, in order to improve both practice and theory to support transformative changes to address climate change and other contemporary social and environmental challenges. That is the goal of Transformation 2019 “Learning from Transformative Action and Thought”, an international conference that will be held for the first time in the southern hemisphere.

The University of Chile will be in charge of hosting this global event, which was previously held in Oslo in 2013, in Stockholm in 2015 and in Dundee in 2017. The global event will be held in the University of Chile from October 16 to 18.

This will be the first time that the conference will be held in a less developed country. For the president of the conference and academic of the Faculty of Agronomic Sciences, Paulina Aldunce, “one of the important things that has moved from northern countries and higher income to a southern country, is to recognize that we have much to offer each other,” considering that in Chile, for example, “we are doing great transformative processes,” as the goal of changing the country’s energy matrix.

Another of the highlights of this meeting is the exchange of experience and theory among the attendees. All this, in a context of “uncertainty and adaptation and transformation in the face of this phenomenon”, where, the specialist warned, “we are the ones who most need transformative processes”.

Professor Aldunce stressed that “we are going to meet academics from all over the world who work on climate change, socio-natural disasters and other environmental challenges. In addition, people related to the COP will come and participate, as members of its scientific committee and some negotiators, as well as government officials and members of communities and NGOs.

Transformation in the face of climate change

Used in other disciplines, it is a decade ago that the concept of “transformation” or “transformational adaptation” began to be applied in relation to climate change to describe one of its effects. Programmed and planned, but often practiced spontaneously, transformation is a more drastic stage in which people, human groups and the State address and respond to this phenomenon.

It is against this backdrop that this international meeting seeks to bring together diverse actors so that from their experiences and activities they can explore the transformation approach in greater depth, pointing towards larger scales and deeper changes.

Thus, the themes of the meeting will be philosophy and framing of transformation in science, transformational stories and narratives, the integration of different knowledge and thinking for transformation and transformation and disaster risk, among others.

Prior to the meeting, in which prominent scientists such as the Nobel Prize winner and academic from the Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, Norway, Karen O’Brien, will participate, a series of workshops called “TransAction” will be held from 14 to 15 October.

Another of the activities associated with the conference will be non-academic sessions, a free space open to the public in which different organizations will freely share with the community their experiences regarding different dimensions related to transformation. Among them will participate on Wednesday, October 16 from 16:30 to 18:00, in the Campus Andrés Bello the Ministry of Agriculture, the student organization Tremendas, the Blue House School, the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism, Terram, Sustainable Chile, Foundation for Overcoming Poverty, Municipality of Pudahuel, among others.

The sponsors of this meeting are the University of Chile -through the Faculty of Agronomic Sciences, (CR)2, CITRID and the Vice-Rectory of Research and Development-, COP25, International Science Council, Future Earth, Inter-American Institute, British Embassy in Santiago, SDG Transformations Forum, the Ministry of Education and Transformasmedia.

All the information about inscriptions and values here.

Translation Pressenza London