ECOPAS / Executive Summary
ECOPAS / Executive Summary ECOPAS (the European Consortium for Pacific Studies) is an innovative and ambitious multi- disciplinary project designed to provide coordination and support to research and policy communities on issues connected to climate change and related processes in the Pacific Islands region. The overarching objective is to define better options for sustainable development in the Pacific and to provide a wide range of research-based knowledge to reach this goal. ECOPAS has been organised as a Consortium with six institutional partners and has followed a concise three-year Work Programme of interrelated activities. The six partners are four recognized European university centres of excellence in Pacific studies in Norway, France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands (Bergen BPS, Aix-Marseille CREDO, St. Andrews CPS and Nijmegen CPAS), and two major Pacific institutions (the University of the South Pacific, Fiji, and the National Research Institute of Papua New Guinea). The Consortium thereby includes the premier research university of the Pacific Islands region, as well as the most prominent policy research institute in the largest Pacific nation. The Consortium’s research focus is on the social sciences and humanities, and the ECOPAS project was designed in response to the FP7 call SSH.2012.2.2-4 ‘Climate change uncertainties: Policymaking for the Pacific front’. The six Consortium Participants had long-term relationships of cooperation among them before ECOPAS was initiated, and collectively constitute a significant, in many respects unique, high-quality research resource in the social sciences and humanities for the European Commission’s engagement in and for the Pacific. The collective scientific coverage of ECOPAS is broad and ranges beyond the social sciences and humanities, in that the Consortium’s Participants, scientific advisory board, collaborating scientists and steering committees include leading scholars in a wide range of relevant disciplines such as climate change studies and meteorology.
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