MU-CEL Students participate at UNESCO Forum
On 5th May 2008, seven undergraduate LLB MU-CEL students and one MU-CEL Masters student participated in the Macquarie UNESCO Forum on Ethics and Energy Technology. The Forum was made possible through UNESCO's initiative and was attended by Darryl Macer of RUSHAP UNESCO who is the Regional Advisor of the Ethics of Energy Technologies in Asia and the Pacific project. It was initiated by Associate Professor Irina Pollard of ELS and then jointly organized with Culum Brown (Advanced Biology Program), Erika Techera and Elaine Johnson (The Centre for Environmental Law).
The Ethics of Energy Technology Project calls for developing dialogues within and between participating countries on the results of research, future research needs, policy lessons and policy recommendations in regard to the ethical issues of energy-related technologies, and related environmental and human security issues. The formal launch of the UNESCO Project took place in 2007 (see http://www.unescobkk.org/index.php?id=energyethics).
Macquarie University's involvement was advertised by UNESCO http://www.unescobkk.org/index.php?id=past_events and co-organised by ELS - see the web page about the Forum at http://www.els.mq.edu.au/UNESCO/unesco-forum.html.
Our students gave excellent presentations on a range of issues including stakeholder responsibility (Emily Price, Stephanie Russo and Kamani Thanakrishnan), community participation (Julianne Brimfield and Louise Whitton) and water resources and energy (Madeleine Hartley, Simone Tielesh and Elise Trask). The Forum was a great success and the abstracts and papers from the Forum will be published in the Eubios Journal of Asian and International Bioethics. It illustrates the effectiveness of interdisciplinary collaboration between staff and students from biology and environmental law.
A piece about the Forum is included in the current Macquarie Staff News at http://www.staffnews.mq.edu.au/home/campus_news and also the Science News page at http://www.els.mq.edu.au/news/sciencenews/351.htm#1. Both include photographs of our students.