GECHS

The International Ocean Institute, USA and the city of St. Petersburg, Florida, USA, are hosting a Coastal Cities Summit on November 17-20 2008, to address the complex challenges that coastal city leaders face as populations increase, resources are depleted, and the impacts of climate change are felt.  The Coastal Cities Summit intends to bring together 600-700 coastal city leaders, managers and academics to discuss environmental, social, economic, and public policy challenges and viable solutions. The 3 ½ day conference will focus on three themes: Climate Change, Risk and Vulnerability, and Sustainable Development.  The planners are soliciting speakers on areas that are particularly relevant to coastal cities: freshwater, pollution, energy, infrastructure, and port security.  All sessions are intended to give a long-needed voice to those who are on the front lines taking leadership on climate change, providing implementation and response plans and continuing to focus on protecting citizens from possible extreme events and human-induced degradation. Full details are available at the conference website.

An international symposium titled “Coping with global change in marine social-ecological systems” will be held in Rome in July 2008. Principal sponsors of the symposium are GLOBEC, EUR-OCEANS and FAO. Marine socio-ecological systems have marine and human components which are highly inter-connected and interactive. The IPCC report identifies the need to make social-ecological systems more resilient by building “adaptive capacity”. This is an issue on which both natural and social scientists can contribute, for example by identifying the essential characteristics of such systems and relevant approaches to building such capacity. By “global change” the symposium includes climate change, but also resource over-exploitation, competing uses of the marine environment, changing lifestyles, and globalisation of trade and economies. While the focus is on climate and environmental change, how these interact with other global changes are important considerations. The central goals of the symposium are to share experiences across disciplines and to identify key next steps and common elements and approaches that promote resilience of marine social-ecological systems in he face of global changes. This involves:

• Exploring conceptual issues relating to social-ecological responses in marine systems to global changes;
• Analysing case studies of specific examples of social-ecological responses in marine systems to significant environmental changes manifested locally;
• Synthesising the work of natural and social scientists and building comparisons of social-ecological responses in marine ecosystems subjected to major environmental variability;
• Developing innovative approaches to the use of science and knowledge in management, policy and advice;
• Identifying lessons for governance for building resilient social-ecological systems.

For information and registration, see the symposium website.

Issue 2 of the GECHS newsletter is now available for download. Contributors, writing on the topic of water, include:

Karen O’Brien on Understanding the Global Water Crisis

Lyla Mehta on Water Scarcity: Measuring the price of perception

Jinxia Wang, Jikun Huang and Scott Rozelle on Groundwater Challenges in Northern China

Kwasi Nsiah-Gyabaah Lessons from Ghana: Sustainable watershed management

And Claudia Pahl-Wostl, Joyeeta Gupta, Nils Petter Gleditsch and Daniel Petry
Water Governance: Global Thinking in Bonn

Download the PDF [746k]

Hillel Shuval and Hassan Dweik (Eds.), Israel - Palestinian Water Issues – From Conflict to Cooperation. Hexagon Series on Human and Environmental Security and Peace, vol. 2 from Springer.

In Israeli-Palestinian Water Issues - From Conflict to Cooperation leading Palestinian, Israeli and international water experts document the importance of mutual understanding, respect and amity among peoples during a difficult period of stress. This book demonstrates hope, optimism and belief that people with good will can help contribute to peace and mutual cooperation in solving shared water problems essential for their mutual survival and welfare. The present water crisis facing the Middle East will become even more severe over the next twenty years, unless dealt with energetically and in good time. This situation requires urgent action by the countries of the region, the international community and civil society generally. This book provides valuable source material for water scientists, engineers, political scientists, specialists in conflict resolution, environmentalists, economists, lawyers, administrators, managers and policy makers interested in understanding, developing, managing and protecting the scarce shared water resources of the Middle East and for the promotion of “Water for Life” for the benefit of all the nations of the region.

Lyla Mehta, GECHS SSC member, was one of the contributors to the Human Development Report 2006, and her background paper “Water and Human Development: Capabilities, Entitlements and Power” is now available online. The paper highlights how the multifaceted aspects of water are often neglected in official policy debates. It looks at a human development approach to water scarcity and asks what entitlements and capabilities would mean with respect to water. Efforts are made to explore the entitlements framework for both water as a basic need/right and for the wider and more productive uses of water. See also the full Human Development Report and all background papers, thematic papers and issue notes.