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ANNOUNCEMENT: GEF International Waters Science Conference 2012: Setting the International Water Science Priorities for the next Decade
April 10, 2012: The conference provides a science‐policy interface to strengthen the role of science in the management of water systems at the global, regional and local level, focus on emerging issues and critical challenges, and highlight the scientific findings of GEF International Waters projects.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is tasked, together with numerous partners, organizing the first International Waters Science Conference under IW:LEARN, a GEF funded project coordinated by UNDP and UNEP. The GEF International Waters Science Conference 2012 [IWSC 2012] will take place from 24-26 September, 2012 in Bangkok, Thailand (tentative venue ‘United Nations Conference Centre, ESCAP building Bangkok').
Some of the challenges directly related to transboundary waters management are:
- Integrating strong land‐water interactions into management approaches
- Shortcutting the degradation of inland waters, in particular in developing countries
- Addressing increasing pressures on coastal ecosystems
- Improved ocean governance to prevent potential collapse of ocean systems
The conference programme is integrative in nature, linking different scientific disciplines with different levels of communication and decision and vice versa. It offers the opportunity to look at different water body types (ground‐ and freshwater, coastal zones and open oceans, rivers and lakes) as well as cross‐cutting themes (indicator development and use, managing the science/policy interface and access to data and information).
In the meantime a Scientific Advisory Committee of well-known scientists and GEF project partners has been founded supporting the scientific preparations and raising awareness of the conference. An Operational Team is working on managing the overall planning of the event. While a detailed conference program will be distributed in the weeks to come, we encourage you to mark the date on your calendars.You can safe-the-date by following this link and adding the date to your calender. For this purpose please click: http://goo.gl/TD5h1
For getting actively involved in the conference we kindly ask for submitting an abstract (for a talk) or scientific experience note (for a position statement in the panel). For this purpose please refer to one of the sessions on one of the four water body types or cross-cutting issues. For submission please access via: www.iwlearn.net/iwsc2012
Deadline for submitting abstracts/experience notes: 28 May, 2012