Specific meetings and plenary sessions at the XII World Water Congress will address integrated water resources management, water infrastructure development, water governance, urban water management, rural water management, water security and risk management, economics and financing of water, and capacity building for water resources management. There will also be an international water exposition at the venue of the Congress.
The Chamber of Mines of South Africa is hosting the 2005 mining conference for sustainable development. The conference aims to take stock of developments over the past two years since the 2003 conference on implementing sustainable development in mining. The conference with look at the benefit to the wealth and well-being of employees, affected communities and society; and the benefit to the air, water and land. It will explore ways to extract more benefit through our actions – taking different actions or taking actions differently. Biodiversity will be topic of discussion.
The workshop will help attendees to understand assessment approaches for streams, wetlands, floodplains, and riparian areas and how they might be cooperatively applied on a watershed basis; to develop integrated watershed plans and policies for wetlands and other related aquatic ecosystems; to apply "on-the-ground" integrated restoration policies including low-tech and low-cost approaches; build local, tribal, state, and federal restoration partnerships for watershed-based approaches.
The International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) is running a workshop on Biodiversity Offsets for Mining in conjunction with The Chamber of Mines of South Africa's Mining for Sustainable Development conference in November 2005. The objective of the workshop is to obtain views from different stakeholders regarding the practical implementation of biodiversity offsets. Offsets offer companies a means of ensuring continued access to resources, securing licence to operate and (given the increasing interest from investors in offsets for risk management purposes) continued access to finance. For governments, biodiversity offsets may help to ensure that commitments such as those under the Millennium Development Goals and the Convention on Biological Diversity are met. For environmental groups offsets can potentially achieve greater conservation value for money. If designed appropriately, they may also confer livelihood and health benefits.
www.diversitas-international.org
EMBARGO: 6 p.m. GMT, Tues. Oct. 25, 2005
Contact: Terry Collins +1-416-538-8712; +1-416-878-8712 (m), [email protected]
DIVERSITAS experts are available for advance interviews Mon-Tues. Oct. 24-25. Please call to schedule a time.
For conference information: www.diversitas-osc1.org or [email protected]
Valuing Biodiversity Services,
Including Its Insurance Against Disease,
Focus of 700 Experts Meeting in Mexico
By diluting the pool of virus targets and hosts, biodiversity reduces their impact on humans and provides a form of global health insurance, biodiversity experts say.
At the same time, intrusion into the world’s areas of high biodiversity disturbs these biological reservoirs and exposes people to new forms of infectious disease, according to Dr. Peter Daszak, one of 700 experts from 60 countries convening in Oaxaca, Mexico for a landmark conference dedicated to the convergence of all biodiversity-related sciences.
Identifying the value to people of biodiversity-related ecosystem services such as disease regulation, climate regulation, storm protection and habitat for useful species is a dominant theme of the First DIVERSITAS Open Science Conference, Nov. 9-12, co-hosted by the Mexican government. Some 450 presentations are scheduled in issue areas ranging from biology to economics and international law, with emphasis on the positive benefits of conservation.
Biodiversity not only stores the promise of new medical treatments and cures, it buffers humans from organisms and agents that cause disease, according to Dr. Daszak, Executive Director of the Consortium for Conservation Medicine, at Wildlife Trust, New York, and member of the DIVERSITAS Scientific Steering Committee.
Growing human contact with wildlife through invasion of forest habitat and the use of wildlife for food or medicine is responsible for the emergence of a series of lethal human diseases that originated in animals, most famously SARS, HIV-AIDS and Ebola, he says, adding that preventing emerging diseases through biodiversity conservation is far more cost effective than developing vaccines to combat them later.
Part of a scientific team that recently connected Asian bats in China with the SARS virus, Dr. Daszak says it’s important to draw lessons from that $50 billion global health crisis when looking ahead to the Asian bird flu and health problems yet to emerge.
“Cutting down contact between wildlife, domestic animals, poultry and people is the way to reduce the risk of spreading disease," says Dr. Daszak: “Persuading policy makers of this is the big challenge. The key is to understand the process of emerging infectious diseases so that we can deal with them proactively before they become a major health threat.”
As with many environmental issues, scientists now realize that a range of measures are involved in preserving ecosystem services such as disease regulation, including sanitary and health directives, education, capacity building, price and tax measures.
Valuing Biodiversity
The Oaxaca conference assembles many perspectives from the natural and social sciences to highlight the causes and consequences of biodiversity loss. Following closely the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment launch, it examines changes in beneficial ecosystem services and the economic causes and consequences of biodiversity loss.
“We are only beginning to understand the relative importance of biodiversity in the provision of services and the trade-offs involved different conservation and development options,” says Arizona State University Professor Charles Perrings, Vice-Chair of the DIVERSITAS Scientific Steering Committee.
“People have to decide what to conserve or use, where to conserve or use it, and what mechanisms to use. The DIVERSITAS conference represents a landmark event in policy-relevant science, showing how science is being harnessed to help develop conservation strategies by analyzing the benefits offered by different strategies.”
“The value of services provided by nature and its diversity is under appreciated until they stop,” says Anne Larigauderie, Executive Director of Paris-based DIVERSITAS.
“Examples abound of services provided free by nature for which expensive artificial replacements are now required. In one part of China, for instance, the loss of bees to pollinate apple trees has caused orchard owners to hire people to do the job. Elsewhere, the loss of microbes that helped keep soil fertile forces farmers to turn to fertilizers.”
“There is a very positive story to be told about the social benefits of investment in conservation,” says Dr. Larigauderie. “Unfortunately, because these services are so difficult to value, the benefits derived from them are often ignored in policy decisions and private activities that lead to irrevocable environmental change. The result: disappearing natural ecosystems, biodiversity loss, and the decline of beneficial ecological functions.”
Biodiversity and the dynamics of infectious disease
In the case of disease regulation, the costs of ecological service degradation are the costs of the diseases themselves.
Among other presenters, Scientists Matt Thomas, Kevin Lafferty and Carolyn Friedman say increases or decreases in species richness and composition affect the dynamics of infectious disease.
In a joint paper to be introduced at the conference as part of a new DIVERSITAS book, they say diversity of both disease agents and their hosts play an important role in disease dynamics in natural as well as managed systems.
For example, pre-infection with one type of virus reduces the death rate in shrimp and rainbow trout when subsequently infected by a more deadly virus. Meanwhile, in an experiment in China, farmers who planted a sacrificial row of rice susceptible to a disease every four to six rows were able to control “rice blast” disease in the rest of the crop and increase yield.
However, Dr. Thomas and colleagues note that presence of other species not directly linked to a particular host-pathogen combination can also influence disease risk and spread. One factor implicated in the increased prevalence of Lyme disease in the eastern U.S., for example, is a reduction in the predators that check the populations of white-footed mice, the main reservoir of the disease. They also note that the impact on humans of Lyme disease in the U.S. decreases in states with more varied potential targets for the ticks that transmit the disease, such as small mammals and lizards.
Conference participants will also learn how West Nile Virus (WNV) carrying mosquitoes prefer some bird species and avoid others, how additional species are likely to be impacted, how impacts might be reduced, and how to reduce the risk of WNV mosquitoes from infecting the unique bird populations of Hawaii and the Galapagos.
Dr. Daszak says the prospect of West Nile Virus entering Hawaii via aircraft is both serious and growing.
"We estimate that up to 70 West Nile-infected mosquitos are going to land in Hawaii every year for the foreseeable future. It's a big risk. If WNV gets into Hawaii it will cause human deaths, cost millions of dollars in health care and affect Hawaii's tourist trade. It will also probably affect some of the native birds and possibly cause extinctions. The highly endangered Hawaiian crow is particularly at risk.
“Knowing this we can act to cut down on the risk of WNV mosquitoes hitching a ride on planes by using residual insecticides inside the cargo holds.”
Other research to be showcased at the conference describes:
• How cutting-edge technologies and genetic science is revealing new organisms on land and in the oceans that look and function very differently, some with entirely new metabolisms. One instrument in development would allow researchers to immediately identify a plant or animal in the wild, understand how species are related to each other and help create an authoritative portrait of the “tree of life”;
• How the ability of different tree species to absorb and store carbon may be used to slow climate change;
• How introducing species to a new environment sometimes transplants invasive diseases and other problems. Exotic bee species imported for crop pollination, for example, appear to have also caused the spread of unwelcome new weeds while several species of frogs have gone extinct from diseases introduced through the importation from elsewhere of frogs as food and pets;
• How destroying wetlands increased human vulnerability to recent natural disasters;
• How the extinction and endangerment of freshwater species, which provide a wide variety of goods and services for humanity, greatly exceeds that of terrestrial, marine, or vertebrate species; and
• How biodiversity-based solutions are being drawn from ecological and traditional knowledge to reduce the negative impacts of intensive modern agriculture on the environment, human health and wild species.
* * * * *
First DIVERSITAS Open Science Conference
Integrating biodiversity science
for human well-being
9-12 November 2005,
Hotel Mision de Los Angeles, Oaxaca, Mexico
More than 700 leading natural and social scientists from 60 countries will attend the first open science conference, convened Paris-based DIVERSITAS to integrate knowledge about the relationship between humans and the world’s biological resources.
Goals of the conference:
• develop ways to determine the true value of biodiversity (economic, social and cultural); and
• provide the scientific basis for decision-making (at policy and personal levels) that reflects these values in the effort to conserve vital resources.
Key questions to be addressed include:
• How biodiversity is changing and why;
• The consequences of change for ecosystems and for the delivery of ecosystem goods and services;
• How to promote more sustainable use of biodiversity and improve human well-being
More than 450 presentations will reveal recent findings across virtually all ecosystems, explain the development and application of new technologies, and challenge current thinking about human activities that are having the greatest impact on biodiversity change.
Sampling of Symposia Topics:
bioDISCOVERY
• Oceans of biodiversity: Discovering species, habitats and ecologies
• Biodiversity informatics: Acquisition, analysis, archiving and applications
• Remote sensing: Methods and applications to assess, monitor and manage biodiversity loss
• Global environmental change and biodiversity: Integrating observations, experiments and models
• Theoretical advances in evolutionary conservation biology
• Phylogeny and biodiversity science bioSUSTAINABILITY
• Understanding and managing biodiversity conflicts
• Sustaining partnerships for community-based conservation
• Implementing multilateral environmental agreements on biodiversity: Balancing equity and effectiveness
• Biodiversity, human-well-being, and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
• Wildlife conservation and economic development in East and Southern Africa
ecoSERVICES
• Biodiversity and litter decomposition: A cross-systems perspective
• Symposium on pollination services
• Forest biodiversity and carbon sequestration
• The insurance value of biodiversity
• Marine biodiversity and ecosystem functioning
Cross-cutting Networks
• Biodiversity in agricultural landscapes: How to save our capital and not lose interest
• Eco-health and conservation medicine: A new agenda for public health and biodiversity
• Diversity, diversification processes and conservation of high mountains biota
• Freshwaters: Sustaining biodiversity and system integrity
• Impacts of invasive alien species on ecosystem services
* * * * *
DIVERSITAS (the Latin word for diversity) brings together biological, ecological and social sciences to address key questions that underlie our limited understanding of the current situation.
• How much biodiversity exists and how does its change or loss affect the system as a whole?
• How does biodiversity correspond to the delivery of ecosystem functions and services, and what is the true value of these commodities?
• How can scientific investigation support policy and decision making to encourage more sustainable use of biodiversity?
Armed with a broader, deeper knowledge of biodiversity, we will be better equipped to safeguard the future of Earth’s natural resources.
For more information, including media registration: www.diversitas-osc1.org or [email protected]
The 9th ordinary meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties to the Convention on Wetlands will review the work of the Convention, plan its future activities, and advance wetland science and policy and management tools. The conference’s focus will be on the effective wetland management for poverty eradication, taking into consideration related priority actions found in Agenda 21, the UN Millennium Development Goals, and the Plan of Implementation adopted at the World Summit on Sustainable Development.
The Ecotourism Emerging Industry Forum is designed to provide professionally moderated, up-to-date results on small and medium enterprise (SME) priorities for funding and investment decisions for sustainable tourism in developing countries.
Proposed topics of the forum include:
* Developing Infrastructure for Sustainable Tourism
* Finance for SMEs' Needs
* Microenterprise Development Needs
* Market Development Needs
* Triple Bottom Line Business Structures & Strategies
* Interpretive Programme Development
At Carbon Finance 2005 you will hear from top-level specialists from a broad range of organisations including: The European Commission, Mitsubishi Securities, European Carbon Fund, European Investment Bank, World Bank, Trexler Climate & Energy Services, Carbon Registry Services, UNFCCC, Enviros Consulting, Rabobank, TechniData, Global Sustainable Development Services, The Gold Standard, Clifford Chance, Camco International, PricewaterhouseCoopers India, GFA Terra, EcoSecurities and Carbon Ventures.
The information they will provide will include:
Keynote talks on what to expect at December's COP/MOP meeting and Phase II of the EU ETS
What carbon buyers expect – a discussion among the major purchasers of carbon credits
What carbon sellers want – panel discussion with project developers from China, Brazil and India
Forthcoming developments in Japan, the US and Russia
Legal, insurance and IT requirements in the carbon markets
The key role of registries
In-depth analysis of price trends in the EU ETS and the CDM market
Emissions reductions and sustainable development.
The Water Environment Federation's Technical Exhibition and Conference provides water quality professionals unsurpassed networking opportunities, extensive education opportunities, hands-on training sessions, and access to the largest Water Quality Exhibition in North America. The conference also includes technical sessions and workshops on topics such as automation and information technology, collection systems, disinfection, industrial issues and treatment technology, lab practices, management of odors and VOC's, public education, regulation, small systems/international management, and many more.
International conference: Climate or development? Codified in the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals, poverty reduction has become the single major objective of development activities. International donor agencies and developing country governments alike try to demonstrate their efforts to focus on this joint objective. At least at first glance fully unrelated to this objective, however, climate policy, driven by the dynamics of the Kyoto Protocol has evolved to become one of the most prospering areas of bilateral development cooperation.
Themes: Is there a hidden relationship between poverty alleviation and climate policy in developing countries? Is poverty alleviation simply a lip service of development policy while other policies, in the interest of private CDM investors or local climate negotiators dominate in practice? Which kind of interests could be involved and could one imagine institutional structures, both within developing countries and at the level of donor agencies that would foster a true synergy between climate policy and poverty alleviation? Which would be the climate policy related activities which could create most synergies? Does the CDM in its current practice really foster development? How can adaptation reach the poor? To what extent is cooperation in climate policy truly additional to other development finance?
Contact: Suenje Callsen
CLIM-FO-L No. 06/2005 12
Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWA) Research Programme on International Climate Policy Neuer Jungfernstieg 21 20347 Hamburg (Germany) Phone: +49 40 42834-349 E-Mail: [email protected]
Bioenergy 2005 welcomes different groups associated with the Nordic bioenergy sector. The key players will discuss the Nordic energy market with a goal of increasing utilization of bioenergy in the Nordic Region and elsewhere in Northern Europe. The conference will allow representatives from business and industry, research and public administration to get together to share their experiences, and create the conditions for the growth of new and valuable relations and networks.
Western Wetland Conference participants will share experiences and learn new approaches to modelling for successful projects and programs, diverse strategies for wetland protection, education and outreach, easements, incentives, and conservation, regulatory approaches, and wetland mitigation.
The target audience for the Wetland and Riparian Area Legal workshop is lawyers, regulators, and other staff from federal, statel, tribal, and local government agencies, consultants, landowners, staff of environmental organizations or others interested in identifying waters of the U.S. for Section 404 permitting and for other purposes. Specific paper topics will include Clean Water Act implications of SWANCC, Agency guidance concerning SWANCC; Federal, state and local programs to fill the gap created by SWANCC; and joint state/federal enforcement of CWA and state pollution laws to close the gap.
The Seminar, a follow-up to the Seminar on the role of ecosystems as water suppliers (Geneva, 13-14 December 2004), will be organized around three major themes: valuing ecosystem services, legal and contractual aspects and challenges for implementation. One outcome will be to make a specific contribution to the ninth meeting of the Contracting Parties to the 1971 Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. This conference will bring together government officials, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations and the private sector.
During an intensive two days, SMIA05 will promote deeper understanding of sustainable management while presenting promising actions and aspects: Entrepreneurial development, stimulation of employees, economies of scale provided by Internet, SME-development, sustainable management systems; Win-Win Management in developing countries, innovative environmental technologies, sustainable financing, marketing and tourism.
In recent years, markets and payments for ecosystem services (PES), such as carbon sequestration, watershed protection and biodiversity conservation, have emerged in several African nations as a viable method for maintaining ecosystems and rewarding responsible environmental management. These mechanisms are generally appearing on an ad hoc basis, however, and little strategic dialogue has occurred to harmonize efforts to achieve broader economic and environmental objectives. In response, Forest Trends and the Katoomba Group are organizing the workshop, "Building Foundations for Pro-Poor Ecosystem Services in Africa," 19-22 September, 2005 in Uganda.
The objectives of this workshop are to strengthen the capacity for individuals to create PES mechanisms, to assess the current state of PES in Africa, to share information about past PES schemes in other regions of the world and to plan the systematic establishment of pro-poor PES schemes in East and Southern Africa. A diverse group of leaders from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, and South Africa are involved with private business, policy making, community leadership, NGOs and academia are scheduled to attend, ensuring the integral players needed to establish PES (buyers, sellers, intermediaries, etc) will be represented.
The agenda for the National Nonpoint Source Monitoring Workshop will include three days of sessions, poster presentations, a choice of three field trips, plus a workshop and an optional Sunday tour. Workshop session topics will include Improving states' NPS programs through project monitoring results and lessons learned; determining the effectiveness and enhancing states' nonpoint source management programs, detecting change in water quality from agricultural or Urban BMP implementation; TMDL's; riparian area and stream protection/restoration, and more.
This will be the first in a series (every 2 years) of Regional Conferences initiated by Tanta University's Department of Water Engineering on remediation and restoration of water resources ecosystems. The conference is intended to bring together scholars, scientists, experts and researchers who contribute to policymaking and management decisions throughout the world to discuss and develop an approach to minimizing deterioration of the worlds' water resources
The European Water Resources Association will host a conference focusing on recent developments in the EU Water Framework Directive roadmap. This development brings the opportunity to build a common vision of sustainable usage of water and aquatic ecosystems. This effort is generating a vast set of expertise in river basin management policies, new economic transparency for water use and innovative approaches in public collaboration.
A broad range of presentation subjects, poster sessions and a commercial exhibition will offer a successful forum for water professionals coming from all over Europe and abroad wanting to share experiences in implemented methods, criteria and procedures related to water resources management.
The World Water Week in Stockholm will include the Stockholm Water Symposium, topical plenary sessions and panel debates, scientific workshops, independently organized seminars and side events. Attendees will be water experts from various sectors and will come from over 100 countries.
This conference held on the Greek Island of Crete will bring together academics and professionals to discuss issues of water resource management. The International Water Associations Statistics and Economics Specialist Group will address topics including a water institutions health index, changes in the water business and the economics of groundwater management.
On 30 June 2005, FAO, in collaboration with Joanneum Research and the BioCarbon Fund, is holding a working session for experts on bioenergy and land use in the CDM.
The Kyoto/Marrakech agreement provides for inclusion of Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) activities in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), limited to afforestation and reforestation projects, and also for inclusion of energy-related projects, to the extent that they reduce emissions from fossil fuels. However, the agreement fails to recognize the interlinkages between land use and a key energy source for many developing countries, biomass energy. Negotiations focused on constraining LULUCF and dealing with permanence, leading to at least two problems:
It was and still is often assumed that bioenergy and other renewable energy sources are always eligible under the CDM. However, this is only the case when emissions from fossil fuels, or other emissions included in Annex A of the Kyoto Protocol are part of the baseline. The replacement of unsustainable biomass use with modern biomass fuels, or with other renewables such as wind energy or solar, is not eligible as a CDM activity as demonstrated in a recent submission by FAO and IEA Bioenergy to the CDM Executive Board.
Projects that combine afforestation/reforestation with the use of biomass to displace fossil fuels are subject to an additional barrier by having to submit two baseline and monitoring methodologies, two Project Design Documents, and having to undergo the CDM screening process twice.
Objectives of the Working Session
The purpose of the Working Session is to assess the above-mentioned issues, illustrate them with case studies, and propose solutions on how reductions of unsustainable bioenergy use in the CDM can be made eligible in the CDM. This will include a discussion of options on how land use and bioenergy could be better included under the Kyoto Protocol and subsequent climate agreements.
In particular, the Working Session will elaborate suggestions on how to address the definition of sustainable (or renewable) versus unsustainable (or non-renewable) biomass, will discuss existing cases and/or types of sustainable land-use/bioenergy systems and will identify necessary steps to reach their eligibility in the CDM.
If you are interested in participating, please contact [email protected] and [email protected]
This seminar is part of the Convention of the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes (Water Convention) by the UNECE. It follows the December 2004 Seminar of the role of ecosystems as water suppliers. This seminar will address services and financing for the protection and sustainable use of water-related ecosystems.
The conference program focuses on finding solutions for improving watershed management, including the effects of changing land cover and hydrologic disruption. A key theme involves fostering adaptive and robust institutions for sustainable watershed management, with particular emphasis on watershed hydrology, pollution, and habitat. Social and economic approaches for watershed management are emphasized, including financial arrangements, environmental rules and regulations, water rights, conflict resolution, and pricing structures.
The Total Maximum Daily Load Conference 2005 will bring together water quality professionals and environmental experts for an exchange of information on challenging issues related to TMDL. TMDL 2005 will provide numerous networking opportunities and a forum for informational exchange. Technical session speakers will discuss how the TMDL process can be improved, how to approach complex water pollution problems, and how to use practical strategies to protect watersheds. The conference will also offer three workshops and an interactive tour designed to provide more detailed information and training on specific TMDL objectives.
11th International Interdisciplinary Conference on the Environment aims to increase the combination of ideas and research findings from different disciplines to enhance our understanding of the interactions between the natural environment and human institutions.
The main purpose of the Ulví¶n Conference on Environmental Economics is to provide a forum for the dissemination of high quality research in environmental economics.
The 26th Annual International Wetlands Meeting will focus on ecological, landscape, and regulatory transformations of wetlands. The coastal plain will be highlighted as the last line of defense for pollutants that impact estuaries. Some proposed session titles include: wetland planning and conservation; ecological risk assessment, policy and regulations; wetland valuation; and wetland ecosystem modeling, ecological economics, and adaptive management.
California Forest Futures 2005 is a two-day conference that will examine the forces dramatically re-shaping our forest landscapes and explore the strategies and actions necessary to secure an economic and ecologically rewarding future.
Join elected officials, policy makers, forest owners, foresters, land use planners, natural resource managers, environmentalist, conservationists, scientists, media and other concerned citizens as we come together to consider the critical choices facing the future of California's vital forestlands.
Honorary Chair: Mike Chrisman, California Secretary for Resources
Invited: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger Senator Dianne Feinstein
Conference topics include:
+ Examining forest loss from increased competition to high costs to booming
real estate values
+ Assessing the impacts of forest loss and development on biodiversity,
water quality, fire threats, timber production and quality of life
+ Making California's forest industry more competitive in a global market while
simultaneously protecting forests
+ Adapting "smart growth" principles to lessen the impact of rural development
+ Developing new, ecological-based revenue streams from carbon sequestration,
water flows and habitat
+ Expanding the use of working conservation easements to preserve the private
forest infrastructure
+ Implementing financial, regulatory and other incentives to promote conservation
+ Promoting new strategies to engage more Californians with our forests
The Land Development Conference & Expo, held for the first time this past May in Baltimore, is being expanded into two major events in 2005. Land Development East will be held May 4-6 at the Marriott Waterfront Hotel in Baltimore. Land Development West is being held at the SunBurst Resort in Phoenix. Both events will feature 40 sessions covering such topics as project management and collaboration, sustainable development, new technology, land development trends, and land use planning. In addition, plans are under way to include more sessions on residential, commercial, institutional, and government project case studies. Although both conferences will deal with national issues, each will have special sessions relative to the eastern and western parts of the country, respectively.