An Overview

This GCRF COMPASS+ Research Impact Forum draws on the recently awarded GCRF GNCA funds (2022-23) to focus on the following three objectives: it

• Takes stock of research findings from GCRF COMPASS (ES/P010849/1, 2017-22) and GCRF Cluster AGRE (EP/T024801/1, 2021-22) in application to the current developments in Central Eurasia region;
• Seeks policy solutions from a resilience perspective, to the existing and emerging challenges to sustainable development across the wider region;
• Develops a wider research & policy impact agenda in the context of changing socio-cultural and geo-political situations across Central Eurasia.

The forum takes stock of the findings from the two projects and examine new challenges faced by the world and the ODA countries of Central Eurasia in particular, to seek policy solutions to this unjust, fragile and geo-politically unstable world of today. Furthermore, the forum explores and connects resilience as self-governance, central to the survival and transformation of local communities/societies, with the resilience as diversity-governance of Global International Society (GIS), to understand how it works especially in times of crises (war), and increasing complexity. The ultimate goal is to see if a more sustainable and ontologically secure world of tomorrow is possible for the region, and if yes, what kind of governance is needed to get there (Korosteleva & Flockhart 2020; Korosteleva & Petrova 2021; Flockhart & Paikin 2022).

Today we are facing a complex combination of crises which contribute and reinforce each other. The recent SIPRI study, for instance, notes that ‘our world is being drawn into a black hole of deepening twin crises in security and the environment. Indicators of insecurity are rising, while indicators of environmental integrity are sinking. The mix is toxic, profound and damaging’ (Black et al. 2022). Dealing with these crises requires new ‘ways of being, knowing, and doing’ (Escobar 2018:19). A complexity-thinking planetary approach to sustainable development through the lens of resilience, presents promising avenues for seeking solutions to future development. The forum will bring together different views and practices, to conjointly (re-)discover ways to more sustainable and resilient communities of relations on local, regional and global levels.