The Applied Centre for Climate and Earth System Science (ACCESS) will be hosting a workshop on the 11th – 20th July 2011 through the Universities of Rhodes and Fort Hare. The workshop will focus on the evolution of Planet Earth’s glorious diversity of flora and fauna and the conditions required to maintain these favourable environments. The favourable conditions depend on the interactions between the atmosphere, biosphere, oceans and solid Earth including phenomena such as El Nino, La Nina, the circulations of the atmosphere and oceans, the drifting of the continents and the ice ages. The course will include a focus on human‐environment relationships, both in the distance past and present, to investigate the impact future global warming and climate change may have.