Where is the 6th NERPS Conference being held?

The conference is scheduled to take place in Jakarta, IDN.

When does the 6th NERPS Conference start and end?

The conference will commence on a Wednesday and conclude on a Saturday.

What is the primary focus of the NERPS Conference?

The conference focuses on the interdisciplinary relationship between nature, economy, and people, aiming to address global challenges at their intersection.

6th NERPS Conference 2027

Name: 6th NERPS Conference 2027
Start: 2027-03-17T00:00:00Z
End: 2027-03-20T00:00:00Z
Location: Jakarta

Mar 17–20, 2027Jakarta, IndonesiaIn-person

Registration open

The 6th NERPS Conference, hosted in Jakarta, IDN, focuses on the intricate relationship between nature, economy, and people. This event serves as a critical platform for researchers and practitioners to delve into interdisciplinary approaches that address pressing global challenges at the nexus of environmental sustainability and economic development. The conference emphasizes the need for integrated solutions that consider both ecological integrity and human well-being. Participants will engage in discussions and presentations that explore innovative research and policy frameworks. The gathering in IDN underscores the growing importance of Southeast Asia as a hub for dialogue on sustainable development, bringing together diverse perspectives to foster collaborative efforts in tackling complex environmental and socio-economic issues.

Committees & topics

Topics
Governing the Anthropocene · AI Regulation and Global Governance · Cooperation and Conflict over Transboundary Resources · Digital Technologies for Peace and Sustainability · Education for Peace and Sustainability · Environmental Peacebuilding · Environmental and Climate Activism · Environmental and Climate Justice

Why it matters

This conference is significant because it brings together diverse expertise to address the complex interplay between natural systems, economic activities, and human societies. In an era of rapid environmental change and increasing socio-economic disparities, understanding these interconnections is crucial for developing effective and equitable solutions. The focus on interdisciplinary research highlights the recognition that siloed approaches are insufficient to tackle global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and sustainable resource management.

By convening in Jakarta, IDN, the conference also places a spotlight on a region that is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of environmental degradation while simultaneously experiencing significant economic growth. This geographical context provides a vital backdrop for discussions, grounding theoretical frameworks in real-world challenges and opportunities. The insights generated from this conference can inform policy-making and practical interventions, contributing to more resilient and sustainable futures for communities worldwide. The emphasis on the 'people' aspect ensures that discussions are not solely technical but also consider the social dimensions and ethical implications of environmental and economic policies.

How to prepare

To effectively engage with the themes of the 6th NERPS Conference, delegates should consider conducting a thorough stakeholder mapping exercise prior to attending. This will help identify key actors and their interests within the nature-economy-people nexus, both globally and specifically within the Southeast Asian context. Understanding the various perspectives, including those of hidden stakeholders, will enhance the ability to contribute meaningfully to discussions and identify potential collaborators.

Furthermore, preparing a dynamic analysis of current environmental and economic policies in IDN and neighboring countries would be beneficial. This involves examining how different policies interact and their cumulative impacts on both ecological systems and human populations. Such an analysis can inform more nuanced engagement strategies during the conference, allowing for more targeted questions and contributions. Considering the gender dynamics across cultures in relation to environmental and economic issues will also be crucial for a comprehensive understanding of the challenges and potential solutions.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Indonesia

As the host nation, IDN is a central player in discussions on balancing economic development with environmental sustainability, particularly given its rich biodiversity and vulnerability to climate impacts.

Role in topic

IDN serves as a critical case study for the conference's themes, showcasing both the challenges of rapid economic growth on natural resources and the innovative approaches being developed to foster sustainable practices. Its diverse ecosystems and large population make it a focal point for understanding the complex interactions between nature, economy, and people.

China

CHN's significant economic influence and environmental footprint position it as a key actor whose policies and practices have global implications for the nature-economy-people nexus.

Role in topic

CHN's rapid industrialization and vast consumer market have profound impacts on global resource consumption and environmental health. Its efforts in green development and international environmental cooperation, particularly within Asia, will be a significant point of discussion regarding large-scale economic and environmental transitions.

United States

The USA, as a major global economy and technological innovator, plays a crucial role in shaping international environmental policy and economic development models.

Role in topic

The USA's research and development in sustainable technologies, its economic policies affecting global trade and investment, and its diplomatic engagement on climate and environmental issues are highly relevant. Its perspective often influences international standards and funding for sustainable development initiatives.

Brazil

BRA's vast natural resources, particularly the Amazon rainforest, make it a critical country for discussions on biodiversity conservation, indigenous rights, and sustainable resource management.

Role in topic

BRA's policies regarding deforestation, agriculture, and resource extraction have global ecological consequences. Its experiences in balancing economic development with environmental protection, especially concerning its unique ecosystems and indigenous populations, offer valuable lessons for the conference.

India

IND's large and growing population, coupled with its developmental challenges, positions it as a key country for examining the social dimensions of environmental and economic policies.

Role in topic

IND faces significant challenges in providing sustainable livelihoods for its population while addressing environmental degradation. Its approaches to renewable energy, urban planning, and poverty alleviation within an environmental context will be highly relevant to discussions on the 'people' aspect of the conference's themes.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Governing the Anthropocene

The term 'Anthropocene' was popularized by atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen around 2000 to describe a proposed geological epoch in which human activity has become the dominant force shaping Earth's systems — from atmospheric composition and ocean chemistry to biodiversity loss and sediment flows. In 2009, Johan Rockström and colleagues introduced the 'planetary boundaries' framework, identifying nine biophysical thresholds; recent updates (2023) found six of the nine boundaries already transgressed, including climate change, biosphere integrity, land-system change, and biogeochemical flows. Although the International Commission on Stratigraphy voted in March 2024 against formally ratifying the Anthropocene as a geological epoch, the concept remains central to global environmental governance and to the work of bodies such as the IPCC, IPBES, and UNEP. The core dispute is political and ethical rather than purely scientific: who bears responsibility for transgressing planetary limits, and who should bear the burden of restoring them? Industrialized states historically account for the bulk of cumulative emissions and resource extraction, while many Global South states argue that 'Anthropocene' framings risk universalizing responsibility and obscuring colonial and capitalist drivers — a critique encapsulated in alternative terms like 'Capitalocene.' Debates extend to whether existing multilateral architecture (UNFCCC, CBD, UNCLOS) is adequate, or whether new instruments — such as an Earth System governance treaty or strengthened UNEP mandate — are required. Today the Anthropocene functions as an organizing concept linking the climate, biodiversity, and pollution 'triple planetary crisis' identified by the UN Secretary-General. Implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (2022), the Paris Agreement, the BBNJ High Seas Treaty (2023), and the ongoing Global Plastics Treaty negotiations are testing whether states can coordinate across sectors at the scale the science demands.

Key players

AI Regulation and Global Governance

Artificial intelligence governance moved rapidly from academic discussion to high politics following the 2022 release of ChatGPT and subsequent foundation models. UNESCO's 2021 Recommendation on the Ethics of AI was the first global normative instrument, followed by the OECD AI Principles, the G7 Hiroshima AI Process (2023), the UK-hosted Bletchley Declaration (November 2023), and the Seoul and Paris AI summits. The European Union's AI Act, adopted in 2024, became the first comprehensive binding regional regime, classifying AI systems by risk and imposing obligations on general-purpose models. In the United States, governance has proceeded primarily via executive action and voluntary commitments, while China has issued binding rules on recommendation algorithms, deep synthesis, and generative AI requiring security reviews and content controls. The core disputes concern scope, jurisdiction, and values. States disagree on whether AI risks are best addressed through a binding international treaty, sector-specific regimes (e.g., autonomous weapons under the CCW), or distributed national rules harmonized through soft law. There are sharp divides over export controls on advanced chips, over open-source versus closed-model development, over human-rights-based versus state-security-based framings of 'AI safety,' and over equitable access for developing countries that lack compute infrastructure. The UN Secretary-General's High-Level Advisory Body on AI delivered its 'Governing AI for Humanity' report in 2024, and the Global Digital Compact (September 2024) established an International Scientific Panel on AI and a Global Dialogue on AI Governance under UN auspices. Today the central question is institutional: whether to build a dedicated UN agency analogous to the IAEA, expand existing bodies, or rely on a polycentric mix. Implementation challenges include compute and data divides, liability frameworks, military AI, electoral integrity, and the human-rights implications flagged by OHCHR and the UNHRC.

Key players

Cooperation and Conflict over Transboundary Resources

Transboundary resources — rivers, aquifers, fisheries, forests, and mineral basins that cross political borders — have long been sites of both cooperation and contestation. The 1997 UN Watercourses Convention and the 1992 UNECE Water Convention codify principles of equitable and reasonable utilization and the obligation not to cause significant harm, but ratification remains uneven and many key basins lack binding agreements. Long-running disputes include the Nile (GERD tensions among Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan), the Mekong (upstream dam-building by China affecting downstream Southeast Asian states), the Indus (under a 1960 treaty now under strain), the Tigris-Euphrates, and the Helmand. Cooperative regimes such as the Senegal River OMVS and the International Joint Commission on US-Canada waters demonstrate that institutionalized basin management is possible. The core dispute pits sovereignty over resources within national territory against the interdependence inherent in shared ecosystems. Climate change is intensifying pressure: shrinking glaciers, shifting precipitation, and droughts are altering flows in basins from the Himalayas to the Andes, while demand from agriculture, hydropower, and growing populations rises. Beyond water, transboundary issues now include shared fish stocks under UNCLOS and the new BBNJ Agreement, transboundary haze and deforestation in Southeast Asia and the Amazon, and contested critical-mineral supply chains in the Lithium Triangle and Central African Copperbelt. Today the policy frontier involves linking transboundary resource governance with climate adaptation, conflict prevention, and the SDGs (especially SDG 6.5 on integrated water resources management). The UN Watercourses Convention's slow uptake, growing recourse to arbitration (e.g., the Indus Waters proceedings), and the rise of basin organizations all reflect a search for mechanisms that can hold under stress.

Key players

Digital Technologies for Peace and Sustainability

Digital technologies are increasingly central to both peacebuilding and sustainable development. On the peace side, satellite imagery, open-source intelligence, and platforms such as the UN's Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT) support ceasefire monitoring, atrocity documentation, and humanitarian logistics. Digital tools underpin early-warning systems for violence, mediation support (e.g., the UN DPPA's Digital Mediation initiative), and election observation. On the sustainability side, Earth-observation satellites, IoT sensors, and AI-driven modeling support climate adaptation, biodiversity monitoring, precision agriculture, and energy-system optimization. The 2024 Global Digital Compact frames digital cooperation as essential to delivering the SDGs. The same technologies, however, present serious risks: disinformation campaigns inflame conflicts, deepfakes erode trust in mediation, surveillance technologies enable repression, and the energy and mineral demands of digital infrastructure (data centers, semiconductors, batteries) carry significant environmental footprints. The digital divide — in connectivity, devices, skills, and compute — means many states most exposed to climate and conflict risks have the least capacity to benefit from these tools. Cybersecurity threats to critical infrastructure, including energy and water systems, further complicate the picture. Today debate centers on how to scale beneficial applications while mitigating harms: building 'digital public infrastructure' (identity, payments, data exchange) under the principles set out by the UN Secretary-General's High-Level Panel; developing standards for the responsible use of AI and remote sensing in conflict zones; and ensuring that the environmental costs of digital systems are measured and managed. ITU, UNDP, UNEP, and the ICRC are among the key institutional actors.

Key players

Education for Peace and Sustainability

Education for peace and sustainability draws on two converging traditions. UNESCO's 1974 Recommendation concerning Education for International Understanding laid early groundwork, evolving into Global Citizenship Education (GCED) under SDG Target 4.7, which also encompasses Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). UNESCO's ESD for 2030 roadmap (2020) and the Berlin Declaration on Education for Sustainable Development (2021) committed states to integrate sustainability competencies across curricula. Peace education has roots in post-WWII reconstruction and the work of figures such as Johan Galtung, and is operationalized in post-conflict settings by UNESCO, UNICEF, and bodies like the Peacebuilding Commission. The core challenges are political and structural. Curricula are jealously guarded as instruments of national identity, and content on contested histories, climate change, gender, or human rights can become politically charged. Many education systems remain organized around narrow cognitive outcomes rather than the competencies — critical thinking, intercultural dialogue, systems thinking — required for sustainability and peace. Conflict and climate shocks themselves disrupt schooling: the UN estimates that over 250 million children are out of school globally, with girls and displaced populations disproportionately affected. Resource gaps for SDG 4 are severe, and the share of climate finance reaching education remains small. Today policy attention focuses on integrating climate education into national curricula (a commitment reiterated at COPs and at the 2022 Transforming Education Summit), expanding teacher training, protecting education in armed conflict under the Safe Schools Declaration, and ensuring that ESD and GCED reach learners beyond formal schooling — including through digital platforms and community-based programs.

Key players

Environmental Peacebuilding

Environmental peacebuilding emerged as a distinct field in the early 2000s, building on earlier UNEP work documenting how natural resources both drive conflict and offer pathways to cooperation. A 2009 UNEP report found that at least 40% of intrastate conflicts over the prior six decades had links to natural resources, and that conflicts involving resources were twice as likely to relapse within five years. The field gained institutional traction through the Environmental Peacebuilding Association (founded 2018), the inclusion of environmental dimensions in UN peace operations, and Security Council recognition of climate-security links in resolutions on Somalia, the Sahel, and the Lake Chad Basin. The core proposition is that shared environmental challenges — water management, reforestation, wildlife corridors, disaster response — can serve as entry points for cooperation among adversaries, while neglecting environmental drivers undermines peace agreements. Examples cited include the Cordillera del Cóndor peace park (Peru-Ecuador), Jordan-Israel water cooperation under the 1994 treaty, and community-level natural-resource dialogues in Colombia and the DRC. Critics caution against techno-optimism: environmental cooperation can be co-opted, can entrench inequalities, or can collapse under broader geopolitical strain, as seen in repeated breakdowns in transboundary cooperation in conflict zones. Today the agenda focuses on mainstreaming environmental considerations into mediation, peacekeeping mandates, and post-conflict reconstruction; on accountability for conflict-related environmental damage (including under the ILC's 2022 Principles on Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts); and on climate-sensitive conflict prevention in vulnerable regions such as the Sahel, Horn of Africa, and Pacific.

Key players

Environmental and Climate Activism

Environmental activism has a long lineage — from early conservation movements and the 1970 Earth Day mobilizations to the rise of transnational NGOs such as Greenpeace and WWF — but climate activism in its contemporary form crystallized in the late 2010s. The Fridays for Future school strike movement, launched by Greta Thunberg in 2018, the founding of Extinction Rebellion the same year, and Indigenous-led mobilizations such as Standing Rock (2016) reshaped public discourse and pressured governments and corporations. Litigation has become a parallel arena: the Dutch Urgenda case (2019), the German Federal Constitutional Court's 2021 climate ruling, the ICJ Advisory Opinion on climate change (delivered July 2025), and ITLOS and IACtHR advisory opinions have established that states have legal obligations on climate action. The core tensions are over the legitimacy and limits of activism. States have increasingly restricted protest through new public-order laws, anti-SLAPP-resistant defamation suits against campaigners, and in some jurisdictions, designation of environmental defenders as extremists or terrorists. Global Witness has documented record numbers of killings of environmental defenders, overwhelmingly in Latin America and Southeast Asia and disproportionately affecting Indigenous activists. UN Special Rapporteurs and the Aarhus Convention's Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders (established 2022) have flagged a global crackdown, even as activists have helped shape the Paris Agreement, the recognition of the right to a healthy environment (GA Resolution 76/300, 2022), and corporate due-diligence laws. Today debate centers on protecting civic space for environmental advocacy, balancing public-order concerns with assembly rights under ICCPR Article 21, and ensuring participatory rights under Escazú (Latin America) and Aarhus (Europe). The role of activism in accelerating — or polarizing — climate policy remains contested.

Key players

Environmental and Climate Justice

The concept of environmental justice originated in the 1980s United States, where studies such as the 1987 'Toxic Wastes and Race' report documented that polluting facilities were disproportionately sited in Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities. The 1991 First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit codified principles that would later be adopted globally. Climate justice expanded the frame internationally, drawing on the principle of 'common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities' (CBDR-RC) enshrined in the 1992 UNFCCC: industrialized states, having contributed the bulk of historical emissions, owe greater action and support to developing states that bear disproportionate impacts despite minimal responsibility. The core disputes concern who pays, who decides, and who is heard. The COP27 establishment of a Loss and Damage Fund (2022) and its operationalization at COP28 (2023) marked a breakthrough but with pledges far below estimated needs. Negotiations over the New Collective Quantified Goal on climate finance, agreed at COP29 in Baku (2024) at USD 300 billion annually by 2035, were sharply criticized by developing-country blocs as inadequate. The July 2025 ICJ Advisory Opinion affirmed that states' climate obligations extend beyond the Paris Agreement and carry consequences for breach. Intersecting justice claims include Indigenous rights (UNDRIP), gender (Lima Work Programme), intergenerational equity, and 'just transition' for workers and communities dependent on fossil-fuel industries. Today climate justice frames debates over fossil-fuel phase-out, carbon markets under Paris Article 6, adaptation finance, debt-for-climate swaps, and reparations claims by SIDS and LDCs. It is also increasingly a domestic governance issue, as states design just-transition policies and confront unequal exposure to heat, flooding, and pollution within their own populations.

Key players

Resources

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Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Conflict Resolution

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Policy Brief Writing

Indonesia March 2027

By committee

Frequently asked questions

6th NERPS Conference 2027

Mar 17–20, 2027Jakarta, IndonesiaIn-person

Registration open

Committees & topics

Topics
Governing the Anthropocene · AI Regulation and Global Governance · Cooperation and Conflict over Transboundary Resources · Digital Technologies for Peace and Sustainability · Education for Peace and Sustainability · Environmental Peacebuilding · Environmental and Climate Activism · Environmental and Climate Justice

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Indonesia

Role in topic

China

CHN's significant economic influence and environmental footprint position it as a key actor whose policies and practices have global implications for the nature-economy-people nexus.

Role in topic

United States

The USA, as a major global economy and technological innovator, plays a crucial role in shaping international environmental policy and economic development models.

Role in topic

Brazil

BRA's vast natural resources, particularly the Amazon rainforest, make it a critical country for discussions on biodiversity conservation, indigenous rights, and sustainable resource management.

Role in topic

India

IND's large and growing population, coupled with its developmental challenges, positions it as a key country for examining the social dimensions of environmental and economic policies.

Role in topic