Welcome to UGEC Today, more than half of the world's population lives in cities. It is clear that the development of urban areas hold the key to many of the challenges we face in our interactions with the environment. The International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) exhibiting its increased focus on urban areas initiated recently the Urbanization and Global Environmental Change core project.This IHDP core project seeks to provide a better understanding of the interactions and feedbacks between global environmental change and urbanization at the local, regional, and global scales through an innovative conceptual and methodological framework. To capture the benefits of urbanization and mitigate as well as adapt to negative environmental and socioeconomic impacts, a stronger collaboration between academics, political decision-makers and practitioners is encouraged. As urbanization represents a critical topic of special policy relevance in today's world, the UGEC core project represents an unrivalled opportunity for addressing critical issues of worldwide importance that have not received adequate attention so far.  UGEC NewsClimate change resilience in an urbanizing Western Africa: short workshop reportThe report can be found hereWestern Africa researchers and policymakers discuss climate change and cities in Dakar, Senegal The UGEC workshop titled 'Climate change resilience in an urbanizing Western Africa' and Dakar, Senegal took place on February 22nd, 2008 and was hailed as a great success by the participants - researchers and policymakers from the West Africa region.As suggested in the recent IPCC Assessment Report, Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to climate change and climate variability with respect to its socio-economic state. The continent is subject to the interaction of ‘multiple stresses’, occurring at various levels, leading to a reduced adaptive capacity. this vulnerability is exacerbated by existing developmental challenges such as poverty, complex governance and weak institutions, limited access to capital - markets, infrastructure and technology-, ecosystem degradation, disasters, and conflicts. Africa’s weak adaptive capacity increases the continent’s vulnerability to projections of climate change.  Overall, Africa contributes only about 4% to global emissions but will suffer increasingly severe impacts of GEC. The precise combination of GEC impacts – some of which are already being experienced – varies by subregion, coastal versus inland location, urban versus rural area, etc. For inland towns and cities, changing rainfall patters (in sub-Saharan Africa, the trends over the last 30 years have often been downwards) are affecting water supply and agricultural production. Many of Africa’s major cities and a high proportion of populations are located on the coast and in adjacent coastal zones. These cities and their associated infrastructure, industrial and commercial facilities and homes, are often on low-lying land, vulnerable to inundation and salinisation of fresh water supplies during severe storms and as sea level rises.For more information on the event as well as summaries and reports visit the workshop space here UGEC e-NewsletterOur most recent electronic newsletter (January-March 2008) can be found here Other NewsWhat follows is a short selection of news streaming out of popular media sources on the topic of Urbanization and Global Environmental Change...
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Noteworthy... UPCOMING EVENTS International Conference 'Studying, modeling and sense making of planet earth', 1-6 June 2008, Mytilene, Greece IHDP Open Meeting 2008, 16-19 October 2008, Delhi, India Fourth session of the World Urban Forum, 3-7 November 2008, Nanjing, China International Forum of GEC and Land Use Change: Dialogue and Experience of Asian Cities, 29-30 November 2008, Taipei, Taiwan RECENT EVENTS 2008 AAG Annual Meeting, 15-19 April 2008, Boston, U.S. Advanced Training course on Spatial Planning as a Strategy for Mitigation and Adaptation to Natural Hazards, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, March 2008. MEDIA Science magazine special issue on cities, Science, February 2008 RELATED INITIATIVES UN-HABITAT Sustainable Development Network (SUD-net) UNU-Institute for Advanced Studies The Urban Resilience Program NAS Urban Environmental Sustainability Initiative Urban Climate Change Research Network CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities Tyndall Centre Cities Programme Login |
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