2013 International Students Conference on Environment and Sustainability

It is our pleasure to invite talented full time university students to attend the "2013 International Students Conference on Environment and Sustainability," which will be held at Tongji University, Shanghai, China, from June 6 to June 8, 2013.

Background and Objective of the Conference

Environment and sustainability is always a hotspot issue that attracts a lot of attention from the international society. Last year at the Rio+20 Conference, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), together with other UN agencies and many higher education institutes around the world, launched "Higher Education Sustainability Initiative" Declaration, aiming to integrate environment and sustainability into higher education with the "Global Universities Partnership on Environment and Sustainability (GUPES)" as a strategic platform. University students, as future leaders and decision-makers of our society, should be engaged in different areas of environmental protection and sustainable development.

Supported by the UNEP and Tongji University, the "International Students Conference on Environment and Sustainability (ISCES)" had been successfully held in the last two years. Around 400 students from more than 40 countries took part in the conference, exchanged understanding and ideas on topics relevant to environment and sustainable development and issued "Global Youth Tongji Declaration." These conferences made great contributions to the spread of concepts and practices of environment and sustainability among university students.

Topics and Main Activities of 2013 ISCES

The topic of 2013 ISCES will be "Food, Health and Sustainable Development." Divided into five groups, university students will be engaged in a series of activities, including lectures, group discussions, field trips and poster competitions. In this process, we aim to inform students of the concepts, practices, the recent developments and challenges on environment and sustainable development.

Host and organizer

The conference is co-hosted by Tongji University and the UNEP, and organized by UNEP-Tongji Institute of Environment for Sustainable Development (IESD).

Participants

Full time university students (including undergraduate and post-graduate students).

Deadlines

The applicants should register online before April 15, fill in the resume form (in English) and upload their posters to the website before April 30. We will announce the selected participants by May 5 and issue invitation letters afterwards.

We believe that the participation and contributions of students you recommend are significant to the success of our conference. No registration fee will be charged and we will cover the 5-night local accommodation, and transportation in Shanghai. Field trips will also be provided by the organizer. We will offer scholarships (round-trip flight tickets) to competitive participants. For more information, please check the official website of ISCES 2013: http://unep-iesd.tongji.edu.cn/index.php?classid=875 ，

To apply for the scholarship, the participants should submit the following documents to isces@tongji.edu.cn before the application deadline: 1) two recommendation letters from associate professors or above, with their signatures; 2) Works on the concepts or practices of sustainable development, in any form (eg: papers, videos, photo albums, etc. NOT in the form of posters, because all applicants should submit a poster.）