World Social Science Report 2013
Changing Global Environments
Produced by the International Social Science Council (ISSC) and UNESCO, and published by the OECD, the 2013 World Social Science Report represents a comprehensive overview of the field gathering the thoughts and expertise of hundreds of social scientists from around the world.
This edition focuses on the transformative role of the social sciences in confronting climate and broader processes of environmental change, and in addressing priority problems from energy and water, biodiversity and land use, to urbanisation, migration and education.
The report includes 100 articles written by 150 authors from 41 countries all over the world. Authors represent some 24 disciplines, mainly in the social sciences.
The contributions highlight the central importance of social science knowledge for environmental change research, as a means of understanding changing environments in terms of social processes and as framework for finding concrete solutions towards sustainability.
Social science research on global environmental change in the Asia-Pacific region
Despite the many problems which global environmental change poses for the Asia-Pacific region, the social sciences have been slow to develop research on the issues it raises. New ways of working are starting to emerge, however, partly driven by the awareness that many Asia-Pacific populations are highly vulnerable to climate change, as the Association of Asian Social Science Research Councils (AASSREC) reports.