The international Knowledge, Learning, And Societal Change research Alliance (KLASICA) is very pleased to announce the dates and theme of the third KLASICA Taipei symposium. We very cordially invite researchers, policy makers, community activists, and practitioners, who are concerned with societal transformations to sustainable futures in accord with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to join us in this exciting and important symposium.

Prof. Dr. Nakicenovic was formerly Deputy Director General/CEO of IIASA from 2008 to August 2018, and former tenured Professor of Energy Economics at Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien). Among other positions, Prof. Dr. Nakicenovic is also the Executive Director of The World in 2050 (TWI2050); Member Ad Hoc Informal Multi-stakeholder Technical Group of Advisors on Sustainable Development Goal 7, United Nations; Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Potsdam Institute from Climate Impact Research (PIK). He was also Member of the United Nations Secretary General Special Advisory 10-Member Group to support the Technology Facilitation Mechanism (TFM) (2016-2018)

The petrochemical industry was once an important foundation to Taiwan’s economic development, however the inadequate enforcement of environmental regulations in the past has resulted in the external costs of pollution and environmental issues being neglected. Although the government has said in the past that it would carry out industrial transformation, the government has not reduced subsidies for fossil fuels, even as the contribution of the petrochemical industry to Taiwan's GDP in the past decade has only accounted for 1.6%. The old model of the brown economy has also held back society's understanding of development.

We very cordially invite researchers, policy makers, community activists, and practitioners who are concerned with societal transformations to sustainable futures in accord with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to join us in this exciting and important symposium.

Focus: Core affective narratives of vision and identity that guide and motivate societal change toward sustainable futures and their applicability for modeling social dynamics.

  As in many other countries, Taiwan is suffering from climate change, air pollution, energy problems and so on. These problems are threatening the sustainability of global ecosystem and economic system, not to mention the survival of the human race itself. How can we survive such global risks? If we are ever to reconstruct an ecologically sustainable and socially just society worldwide, we must deal with the issue of “energy transition.”