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Project Leader	Prof. Isao KOIKE Director Ocean Research Institute The University of Tokyo 1-5-1 Minamidai, Nakano Tokyo 164-8639 JAPAN Tel: +81-3-5351-6460 Fax: +81-3-5351-6461 Email: koike@ori.u-tpkyp.ac.jp
Funding	US $27,600
Participating countries	Over 1400 scientists and 105 countries were represented, including Australia, Bangladesh, China, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Russia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam

Introduction/Background
The first IGBP-wide open science conference addressed the need to communicate the major accomplishments and synthesis of the last decade of global change research, highlighting comprehensive research carried out by the IGBP in collaboration with WCRP and IHDP. The conference explored future scenarios of earth system science and how best to make scientifically based contributions to governance for global "sustainability management".

The initiative has also helped increase the awareness, among the broad scientific, policy and resource management communities, of the latest scientific understanding of global environmental change (GEC) science. The GEC programmes strive at increasing the level of participation and scientific support particularly from developing countries, since such a broad international representation will mirror the diversity of science policies and perceptions, and respond proactively to the concerns of the science-policy dialogue and need for regular information exchange. The above objectives inspired us to propose a small conference award programme to facilitate the attendance of promising scientists from developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The direct rationale of the award with respect to APN priorities suggested that this award would contribute to improve individual and institutional linkages between young scholars in developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region and the global change research community.

Outline of activities conducted
The conference was held from 10-13 July 2001, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The conference summarised in a major event the first decade of the IGBP programme. Registration was on the upper side of 1400 persons, with 105 countries represented. More notably was that among the 400 participants from developing countries, about half were from APN countries. The conference included plenary sessions with overview talks of many integrated scientific issues, followed by more detailed topics in parallel and poster sessions. Many of the themes covered in the plenary sessions included the integration of at least two major research projects of IGBP, WCRP and IHDP. Parallel sessions in the afternoon were more disciplinary focused, but also included integrated aspects of global environmental science, namely Global Change and Fire, and Tradeoffs between Food Production and Environment. Details of those conference presentations of both plenary and parallel sessions (slides and texts) are now available on-line from the IGBP homepage <http://www.igbp.kva.se>.  During the Conference, a panel discussion was organized to focus on the issue of global change science in developing countries, entitled "The scientific divide and capacity building". Professor Thomas Rosswall, from the International Foundation for Science (recently appointed ICSU Executive Director), introduced and led the session. The panel included 7 panelists: Shem O. Wandiga, Chairman of Pan-African START Committee (PACOM), Kenya; Congbin Fu, Global Change System for Analysis Research and Training (START), Regional Centre for Temperate East Asia, China; Sharifah Mastura, Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN), University of Kebangsaan Malaysia; Roberto Aduan, Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI), University of Brasilia, Brazil; Hartwig Kremer, Deputy Director of the International Project Office of LOICZ, Netherlands;  Peter Tyson, Chairman of START, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, and Mohamed H. A. Hassan, Executive Director of  Third World Academy of Sciences, Italy.  During the introduction, Professor Rosswall stressed some of the problems related to the "scientific divide" referring that research & development money spending by the 29 countries of the OECD in 1998 was greater than the economic output of the world's 61 poorest countries. Because of poor research environments, those educated and skilled individuals are leaving the country and "brain drain" is particularly serious in Africa. The panelists also presented their views regarding capacity building in global change science in their particular country or region.

Outcomes/Products
One of the major outcomes of the conference was the adoption of "The Amsterdam Declaration on Global Change", which was prepared by the leadership of the four international global change research programmes (IGBP, IHDP, WCRP and DIVERSITAS), and formally endorsed by a strong majority of the conference participants. The declaration aims at alerting the world about the reality of global change and the urgent need for action. Such an awareness is based in research carried out over the past decade has provided sound scientific evidence that:

• The earth system behaves as a single, self-regulating system comprised of physical, chemical, biological and human components.
• Human activities are significantly influencing Earth's environment in many ways in addition to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.
• Global change cannot be understood in terms of a simple cause-effect paradigm.
• Earth System dynamics are characterized by critical thresholds and abrupt changes. Human activities could inadvertently trigger such changes with severe consequences for Earth's environment and inhabitants.
• In terms of some key environmental parameters, the Earth system has moved well outside the range of the natural variability exhibited over the last half million years.
• An ethical framework for global stewardship and strategies for Earth System management are urgently needed.
• A new system of global environmental science is required.