For further information
The CIRAD 2011, International Year of Forests website
The Domaine d’O website
The Imagine 2020 website
Research units
Tropical Forest Goods and Ecosystem Services: Facing Global ChangeCIRAD is a partner in the Domaine d'O Summer Lab 1: from science to art, forests at the heart of life
04/08/2011 - Press release
From 24 to 27 August, the Domaine d’O, an art and cultural centre in Montpellier overseen by the Conseil général de l’Hérault, in partnership with CIRAD, is organizing the first summer school of the European Imagine 2020 – Arts and Climate Change network. To mark 2011, the International Year of Forests, the topic of trees and forests and their ecological, social and economic role has been chosen for discussion by the scientists and artists who will be attending.
The lmagine 2020 network, founded for five years (2010-2015) by eleven arts organizations in nine European countries, is committed to ensuring greater consideration of global change by highlighting the links between art and science. The network now wants to organize a summer school each year, centring on global change, as part of the fight against global warming.
"It was following my participation in the Nuit des Chercheurs, organized at the Domaine d’O, that the people in charge of the summer school asked me to be on the steering committee ", Charles Doumenge, a CIRAD forest ecology research, explains. "The initiative is a unique opportunity to mobilize various CIRAD researchers, and also the regional and national scientific community ". Since then, a partnership agreement has been signed by the Domaine d’O and CIRAD (which will be part-funding filming of the summer school).
From multi-disciplinary to multi-cultural
Dancers, painters, actors and directors (some thirty people from ten countries) will be working with a dozen or so researchers and experts from CIRAD, the IRD, the Silva association, IDDRI and the Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science at the University of Dundee, Scotland.
"The aim is to provide scientific knowledge to foster discussion between artists and scientists ", says Charles Doumenge. In fact, the school will not centre on lectures, but on exchanges and debates between the participants, which could give rise to joint projects. And the agenda is action-packed, from a tour of the Forêt de l'Aigoual with the ONF, sensorial workshops, participatory sessions, group debriefings and talks.
The four days will centre on a selection of major topics:
• Wednesday 24 August: tour of the Mont Aigoual forest
• Thursday 25 August: forest, a vital ecosystem
• Friday 26 August: forests, an essential environment for humans
• Saturday 27 August: the poetry of trees.
CIRAD scientists will be leading the following participatory debates:
• forest biodiversity, ecosystems and relations between species (Charles Doumenge)
• the ecosystem services rendered to human populations by forests (Driss Ezzine de Blas)
• the history of forests, their evolution and the impacts caused by climate change and man (Sylvie Gourlet-Fleury)
• agroforestry and forests created by and for man (Régis Peltier).
- Category: Science