FIELD OF STUDY AND NEEDED FOCUS AREA

The main research and consultancy areas of this centre are covering the following aspects:

1. Climate change: The impacts of climate change and global warming can be felt far beyond the location where the event occurs, creating conflicts of interest. The direct impacts of climate change and global warming include the destruction of natural resources and the agro-economy; loss of life; human resettlement and migration; and damage to infrastructure, the economy, and the environment. Therefore, there is a greater need for widespread policy efforts to address this climate change issues in the country specific case. This centre will do researches on possible risk issue and vulnerability, resource depletion, possible mitigation and adaptation solution as a point of reference.

2. Climate change and research in higher education: Paradigm shifting in higher education (HE) made the society to realize that every profession demands competent professionals to have a balanced development across all educational sectors in order to see the national development in progress. As a result, the universities now provide a wide range of training and education; however, the primary contribution of HE is still seen supporting solely to economic development. The issue of climate change is yet to be perceived either as economic or as a social developmental phenomenon. Consequently, HE provides less attention to climate change. Therefore, HE needs to discover a concrete and substantial way in contributing to handle climate change.

3. Low Carbon Green-growth economic development and sustainability: The dialogue on low-carbon green growth and progress towards long-run sustainable economic development has been increasingly emphasized recently to address the climate change issue. However, the range of timescales, consequences, perspectives and methods of addressing the issues are still open to dispute, therefore, an applicable country specific green-growth economic development and sustainability study to date is still as an important issue for the long-run solution. Consequently, this centre will be a reference point, since trade does not take place in a vacuum.

4. Agriculture and rural development: The issue of food security, self-sufficiency and sustainability issues related to climate change are a real concern for a long-run vision. There is a relationship between climate change (i.e. climate pattern) and the agro-economy. Commonly policymakers are worried about the consequences of climate change and global warming, and increase its vulnerability in the future. Therefore, a scenario based policy modelling is essential. Research activities in CAEPS will visualize alternative guidelines and some of the potential paths to concerned policymakers that could take with their planning strategies.

5. Policy modelling: The new challenge in addressing climate change issues to date is how to involve dimensions of physical and social science in a new modelling technique. This challenge must take the demands of economic development into account on the one hand, and requirements for effective climate change adaptation/mitigation on the other. Here, the coordination of multidisciplinary modelling is important in structuring long-term climate change modelling for sustainable economic development. This multidisciplinary approach must enable new effective modelling techniques taking account of national agendas, foreign climate policy, existing policy options, future country-specific road-maps, market preferences and technology changes in the distant future, since climate change is a long-term matter. This centre will be a reference point to carry out such kind of multidisciplinary modelling research.