TRACK: International Challenges TITLE: Science and the End of Poverty DATE: Friday, February 17, 2006 TIME: 8:30 AM - 11:30 AM ORGANIZERS: Roberta Balstad, Earth Institute, Columbia University   PARTICIPANTS:   * = invited, not yet confirmed. Sarah J. Scherr (Speaker), Forest Trends Food Security for the Poorest Benjamin Orlove (Speaker), University of California, Davis Climate Change and Poverty: A Cultural Perspective Vijay Modi (Speaker), Columbia University Delivering Energy Services Where There Are None Marc Levy (Speaker), Columbia University The Distribution of the World's Poor as a Function of Biophysical Parameters Charles Vörösmarty (Speaker), University of New Hampshire Water Resource Variability and the Origin of Internal Conflict John Mutter (Speaker), Columbia University Human Well-Being and Earth's Natural Extremes AVAILABLE ABSTRACTS: No available abstracts. SYNOPSIS: For far too many, the state of human well-being is bleak. A billion people live in extreme poverty, trying to survive on less than a dollar a day, fundamentally lacking the normal attributes of a decent, dignified life: adequate housing, sanitation, health care, education and employment . They are chronically hungry and frequently sick. Natural disasters, whether disease outbreak, earthquake, landslides, floods, or the tragedy of the Asian tsunami in 2004, take the lives of the poorest in greatest number, with women and children suffering the most. The United Nations' Millennium Development Goals set ambitious targets and time-lines to reduce poverty and hunger and improve education, health, and other key aspects of human deprivation. To achieve them we must recognize that poverty is not solely a social or political matter, nor is it simply caused by population pressures. A new understanding of poverty is emerging in which natural and environmental drivers, together with traditional social, political, and demographic causes, underpin livelihoods. Speakers will address the critical role of science in understanding the drivers and feedbacks of poverty and in providing prescriptions to relieve its massive global burden.