Urbanization is a dominant demographic trend of global land transformation with climate change greatly affecting urban livelihoods and habitats. There is a clear need for innovative approaches to better understand climate change resilience, social cohesion, and mobility, in urban areas situated at the frontlines of climate change impact. Sustainable Development Goal 11, also known as the Urban SDG (USDG), is focused on how urban communities can build resilience and social cohesion to help mitigate climate change, develop climate action and adapt to increasingly challenging climate change conditions in urban areas.
The concept of the Humanitarian-Development-Peace nexus was developed to better understand protracted conflicts, forced displacement and intense environmental hazards, all contributing to a cycle of vulnerability. In addition, Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, demonstrated a close linkage between good governance, sustainable management of resources, and peace; the democracy-environment-peace nexus. In many cases, local knowledge on how to mitigate and adapt to climate change and become more resilient is already present and being implemented on community level.
Within these broad areas of enquiry, this final symposium of the MaU-led Resilience in Urban Sudan (RUS) research project, will take place on 25-26 August. We invite scholars, researchers, PhD students, practitioners, policy makers, civil society and NGO representatives to submit abstracts for presentations during this final symposium. The symposium gives opportunity to exchange knowledge with a delegation of eminent Sudanese researchers involved in the RUS project who will be visiting Malmö during the conference. Abstracts may be submitted for conventional paper presentations of 20 minutes on scholarly studies and research, as well as for innovative and alternative presentations or media installations, that contribute to knowledge production on innovative approaches to climate change resilience and governance in urban areas of the Global South and Sweden.
During the conference, the Sudanese-Swedish research team will present the results of our 3-year RUS project[1], which started at the end of 2019. This interdisciplinary project involves collaboration between researchers in Sweden and Sudan and combines environmental sciences, humanities and social sciences.
We invite abstracts within the following strands:
o Climate Resilience, Diversity and Social Cohesion
o Urbanisation and Climate Change Migration
o Environmental Memory and Local Ecological Knowledge
o Land Use, Urban Agriculture and Climate Change Impact
o Floods and Loss and Damage in Urban Environments
o Sustainable Climate Change Actions and reduction of inequalities.
o Locally-led Action, Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Resilience
o Innovative Approaches to Climate Change Communication and Storytelling
o Participatory and Visual Methods of Climate Change Research: co-creation, mapping and collaborative future making
How to submit your abstract?
Theme: Select one of the conference strands and indicate this on the abstract.
Format: Indicate conventional paper presentation (20 mins) or alternative media installation.
Title: The title is limited to 150 characters.
Words: Between 250-300 words for the abstract text excluding the title and author’s information.
Authors and affiliations: Please enter authors’ names, affiliations and contact information. Do not use capital letters unless abbreviations or similar.
Image: The abstract allows for no images.
Submission: Submit your abstract in a Word document per E-mail to:
Deadline: 29 June 2022
Authors will be notified by 12th July via email whether their abstract has been accepted for presentation at the conference. From that date, on-line registration for the conference will open for presenters and participants. Authors will also receive information on the conference programme and the deadline for submitting final papers (tentatively 10th August 2022). Conference papers will be circulated approximately a week before the conference. There is no conference fee, and lunches and a conference dinner will be provided by the organisers.
When and where?
25-26th of August 2022, University of Malmö, Sweden
· Storm Innovation Hub
Gäddan, Citadellsvägen 7, 211 18 Malmö
· Niagara Building
Nordenskiöldsgatan 1, 211 19 Malmö
The symposium will be partially hybrid and a zoomlink will be provided upon conference registration
[1] The RUS project is supported by the Swedish Research Council projectnumber 2018-05773.
Contact information:
Dr. Fanny Christou, Postdoctoral Researcher
Email: fanny.christou@mau.se
Dr. Josepha Ivanka (Joshka) Wessels, Associate Professor
Email: josepha.wessels@mau.se
Communication for Development (ComDev)
K3 - School of Arts and Communication
Malmö University
205 06 Malmö, Sweden
Why Sudan? Scientific background of the RUS project
The second largest country on the African continent, Sudan is one of the poorest countries of the world. It is a country at the frontlines of global climate change, severely impacted by long spells of drought, irregular rainfall, recurrent and increasing floods and sandstorms. Moreover, it is envisaged that the country will increasingly become severely affected by upcoming climate change with projections of rising temperatures by over 3 degrees Celsius in 2060.
Sweden has a long-standing development cooperation involvement in Sudan. Sudan is a country of 46 million people and an important recipient of Swedish development funds amounting to 700 million Swedish krona (66 million Euro) in 2021 alone. Sudan is a country in political transition, having gone through a military take-over in 2021, after a revolutionary societal transformation toppled the previous dictatorial regime of Omar el-Bashir in 2019. The Swedish government is currently formulating a new strategy for Sudan to come into force in 2023.
Over 18 million people in Sudan, are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance and this number is increasing. Next to the dire humanitarian need, the country is currently witnessing rapid urbanization as a result of decades of protracted conflict which has displaced millions of people inside the country who have migrated to urban centres like Greater Khartoum. Projections also indicate that in South Sudan, global warming will be felt 2,5 times more than the global average (UNDP, 2017). In addition, to a hotter climate, the country is also challenged by erratic rainfall, long spells of droughts and extreme flooding events, dust storms, thunderstorms, and heat waves. Khartoum specifically, as the largest urban centre in Sudan located on the confluence between the White and the Blue Nile, suffers from desertification and a higher frequency of occurrence of damaging and destructive floods.
For more information please visit: https://mau.se/en/research/projects/resilience-in-urban-sudan-rus/