Global Environmental Change: Challenges to Science and Society in Southeastern Europe

Abstract

This book is the outcome of the conference “Global Environmental Change: Challenges to Science and Society in Southeastern Europe” organized by the Scientific Coordination Center for Global Change (SCCGC) at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences jointly with the Austrian Science and Research Liaison Offices Ljubljana and Sofia (ASO). The event was supported by the Federal Ministry ofScience and Research ofthe Republic ofAustria in the framework of its SEE sci- ence cooperation initiative. Sponsorship was also provided from the Knight-Staneva Foundation for Sustainability and Future Environments (USA) and the EC FP6 ADAGIO project (www.adagio-eu.org). The Conference celebrated the anniversary of the founding of the SCCGC in 1997 as National Coordination Center for Global Change (NCCGC). The idea for such a center evolved at the June 1997 Workshop “Global Change and Bulgaria” held in the American University in Bulgaria, Blagoevgrad, sponsored by the US National Science Foundation via the Center for Integrated Regional Assessment (CIRA) at the Pennsylvania State University. In examining the competencies Bulgarian scientists would bring to the study of climate change and its impacts, that workshop identified a number of research priorities and future strategies to be pursued. The workshop resulted in two publications, Globalnite promeni i B?lgari?1 and Global Change and Bulgaria.2 The most important future strategy from the 1997 Workshop was the proposal to the leadership of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences for formation of the NCCGC, with the recommendation that it be headed by Academician Dimitar Mishev, direc- tor ofthe Academy’s Solar-Terrestrial Influences Laboratory, and membership from a variety of institutes and other organizations. In July 1997, the NCCGC came into being and operated under that title until the death of its president, Academician Mishev, in 2003.