1. Future Earth workshop – Kuala Lumpur Breakout session 1: Developing a regional vision for Future Earth Key messages Group 3

2. 1.Harini Nagendra (Chair) 2.Anantha Duraiappah 3.Toshio Yamagata 4.AkioTakemoto 5.Aysun Uyar 6.Hong Kum Lee 7.Nancy D. Lewis 8.Soroush Modabberi 9.Christine Chan 10.Kanayathu Koshy 11.Meine Van Noordwijk 12.Mitsuo Uematsu Participants

3. Human development that is equitable and inclusive; self-determined governance; environmentally and ecologically sustainable Rethinking the FE vision – relationship between science and society There are a lot of existing networks in Asia – universities, funding agency networks, policy networks (ASEAN, APN, START, CSIR labs etc) - FE should not aim to replace, but to build on these Lack a regional funding agency like the EU What is the scale of Future Earth? Unless we know some answers to this (which depend on funding, but also on level of organization, institutional mechanisms, human resources etc), difficult to answer these questions 1. What is your vision for global change and sustainability research for the region and how do you see Future Earth contributing to it?

4. Research challenges Include coastal sustainability, climate change, urbanization, fresh water scarcity – huge variability between issues for Iran and Afghanistan, for eg, and Bangladesh, and Japan Need to involve engineering community for focused technological ”green” solutions Danger of focus only on short term quick answers – governance issues and equity issues take time and effort to solve; Other challenges – Lack of capacity in many countries Training for next generation Brain drain – especially following training Involve private sector, educational, policy, local communities etc 1. What is your vision for global change and sustainability research for the region and how do you see Future Earth contributing to it?

5. Focus on meso-scale GEC issues such as pollution; monsoons; riverbasins etc – that require explicitly regional focus Careful selection of small scale studies with best practices, to then provide to governments to scale up Develop approaches and programs to bring groups of people who do not normally talk to each other, together Capacity building for education, research and policy All of this is linked to funding – Governments should be approached to develop capacity within countries to build research addressing international agreements like UNFCCC, CBD Current Asia, Future Earth? 2. What would success look like for Future Earth in the region? What impacts could Future Earth make in the region?

6. Increase human capacity – training programs, short term workshops, exchanges of PhD students, more PhD positions within countries on GEC; post-docs, funded Chairs; Create networks such as STS – bring together scientists, policy makers, corporates – such as successful examples in Japan Bring in a greater diversity of countries – central Asia, east Asia, significant gaps in country representation noted at this meeting Significant lack of social scientists particularly working on policy/institutions, poverty/equity, behaviour studies Explicitly bring in indigenous communities and local knowledge systems 3. What would be key requirements / steps to get there?

7. Discomfort with too much of a focus on quantitative indicators of success Quality as important as quantity Establish a stable funding mechanism at a regional level Indicators such as doubling or tripling number of PhD, postdoc, chair positions in GEC by 2020; increased access to funding and finance for young scientists; doubling publication output and citation levels in region on GEC; etc More importantly – again – lack of time and diversity of representation to address these issues 4. What would the success indicators be?

8. Strongly recommend that these dialogues continue beyond workshop, electronically, adopting this group as a core but also extending to crowdsourcing to address issues of representation, geographic diversity of countries and ecosystems; more social scientists; diverse sectors of society This should not be a rapid, one-off initiative in the region but carefully built Regionally self-determined, within global framework Strengths of Asia – half the world’s population, economic growth Need regional solutions and strong, representative regional network with priorities that are developed through in-depth, long term, sustained discussion Long term recommendations