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APN Newsletter June 1999
Message from the APN Director The 4th Inter-Governmental Meeting held in Kobe, Japan from 18-20 March marked an historic stage in the development of the APN. By approving the 5 year Strategic Plan and the relocation of the Secretariat to Kobe, the foundations have been laid for a dramatic improvement in our operations. The new Secretariat office in Kobe was made possible by the generous support of Hyogo Prefectural Government. As well as the office, Hyogo will be supporting two new members of staff and funding for APN activities including a symposium and workshop on global change to be held in Kobe from 20-22 October. Full details are given on p5. I think all members of the APN are grateful to Hyogo for their vision to support an international organisation of this type. This institutional improvement will greatly enhance the APNﾕs ability to promote and support global change research in the region in accordance with the APN Strategic Plan, and to ensure that the results of that research are passed on to policy makers. I very much hope we can maximise this opportunity for the benefit of APN member countries. -Yuki Mori Back to the contents of APN Newsletter June 1999 GUEST ARTICLE: PACIFIC ISLAND BEACHES - A DIMINISHING RESOURCE? Patrick D. Nunn, Professor of Oceanic Geoscience, The University of the South Pacific, FIJI A Resource For Whom? For the millions of continental dwellers who visit the Pacific Islands every year, it is their coastlines which form the focus of interest. And of the various coastline elements, it is perhaps the beaches which are the most attractive, the most visible, indeed those which for many encapsulate most completely the Pacific Island Experience. For long-term inhabitants of Pacific Island coasts, beaches are generally viewed more pragmatically. They are useful for pulling boats onto, as sources of sand for cement, or even as rubbish dumps but otherwise generally less valued than the habitable land on one side and the coral reefs fringing the other. Yet the beaches are but one component of the coastal system: on account of their largely unconsolidated nature, the most fragile part. They are important as stores of sediment which might otherwise circulate in the lagoon, or be deposited across fringing reefs. They also have a critical role in absorbing wave energy, and therefore in buffering the shoreline inland from wave attack. A traditional lack of interest in beaches and therefore a lack of understanding of how these landforms develop and can disappear has combined with the widespread popular belief, reinforced by tourism image makers, that beaches are permanent features of Pacific Island coasts to create a number of problems. Traditional Human-Environment Interactions The first problem dates back to the time when humans first settled Pacific Island coasts - for most of them within the last 3500 years. There are indications that at this time, tropical coasts were fringed more extensively by mangal (mangrove forest) than they are in many places today. To facilitate access between the beach and the ocean, among other reasons, many mangroves were cleared, a process which was repeated throughout the region around 150 years ago when many islanders left (or were compelled to leave) fortified inland settlements for new coastal settlements. Mangrove clearance by humans along tropical Pacific Island coasts has led to the exposure of the beaches, for so long sheltered from attack by waves, and the beginning of the present phase of beach erosion. The island Ovalau in central Fiji provides an excellent example of the effects of mangrove clearance. Most coastal settlements had cleared the entire mangal directly in front of them by the 1940s and subsequently experienced loss of beaches and erosion of the narrow coastal plain which fringes this high volcanic island. Yet two villages on Ovalau instigated social taboos against the cutting of mangroves, and have never experienced the problems which most of the others on the island have had (Figure 1). Yet, manifestly the cutting down of the mangal is not the only cause of beach erosion in the Pacific Islands for even on coasts - such as those in Hawaii - which were never fringed by mangrove, erosion is occurring (1). There are other local causes of shoreline erosion but clearly, given its regional applicability within the Pacific Basin, a regional cause of beach erosion is operating. Sea-Level Changes - Regional Causes Of Beach Erosion The principal type of sea-level change to have affected the Pacific is sea-level rise, likely to have been occurring throughout the Pacific Ocean for around the last 200 years (2). The best-monitored record is from Honolulu on Oahu Island in Hawaii, which shows that sea level has been rising at a rate of around 1.5 mm/year for the last century. Comparable rates have been recorded elsewhere. The form of most beaches is an outcome of mean sea-level position, tidal range and wave energy regime. When the sea level begins rising, this form becomes disrupted, changing until sea level stabilizes again. The change in beach form (the Bruun Effect) involves aggradation in lower parts and, most importantly for human inhabitants of Pacific Island coasts, erosion in its upper parts. Responses As elsewhere in the Pacific Islands, the response of the Ovalau people to eroding shorelines and disappearing beaches was to build seawalls. Most seawalls built in the Pacific Islands have been vertical and impermeable, and often exacerbate the problems they are intended to solve. Unless regularly maintained, most such seawalls collapse within 2-3 years of construction (3). Some of the most effective forms of shoreline protection are natural ones, particularly mangroves (Figure 2), which are likely to be the most cost-effective option for many tropical Pacific Island coasts threatened by even higher rates of shoreline erosion in the future if sea level rises as widely anticipated. Yet it seems more likely that most coastal communities will continue to try to build artificial structures, thus hastening the changes which they are endeavouring to reverse. If artificial structures are to be built, then Pacific communities should be made aware of the best design options (4). Conclusions Pacific Island beaches have been diminishing and disappearing throughout the last few decades on many islands. Their preservation and restoration depends on knowledge of coastal processes, particularly quantitative data which is absent for most places, rather than on ﾔbig-fixﾕ solutions, the cost of which is prohibitive for most Pacific Island nations and communities. If effective measures are not put in place, beaches will disappear increasingly and the tourist brochures of the future may have to be rewritten; what were commonplace sights in the twentieth century may become only a fading memory in the twenty-first century. References
Figure 1. The islands
Ovalau and Moturiki, central Fiji, showing the nature of coastal
erosion. Note how the two places where the mangal has been preserved
- Bureta and Visoto - have experienced no significant problems. Figure 2. Mangrove
replanting at Korotogo, south Vitilevu Island, Fiji, is intended
to reduce shoreline erosion at this site. Early experiments at replanting
were unsuccessful; now plants are grown in a nursery for around
3 months then, when planted out, around 95% will survive. Back to the contents of APN Newsletter June 1999 LARGEST EVER IGM AGREES FUTURE APN STRATEGY Representatives from 18 countries and 3 international organisations gathered in Kobe, Japan from 18-20 March for the 4th APN Inter-Governmental Meeting, hosted by Hyogo Prefectural Government. As well as making the final decisions on project funding for 1999/2000 (see p11 for details of projects funded) the meeting also approved the APN's 5 year strategic plan, the relocation of the Secretariat to Kobe and plans for an APN global change symposium and workshop in October (see p5). The APN Strategic Plan was commissioned by the 3rd IGM in 1998, in order to "help clarify thinking on the most productive role for the APN". From July last year to March this year, secretariat staff conducted a fundamental appraisal of the APN, covering issues such as the APN's mission, vision, priorities, objectives, activities, organisation and relationship with other relevant organisations. At the core of this appraisal was an open consultation process involving questionnaires, correspondence, interviews and working groups. The key features of the strategic plan are:
Having been developed in consultation with all member governments as well as the major global change research programmes and regional organisations, the APN now has a clear blueprint for its activities. At the same time the plan is sufficiently flexible to allow for unforeseen developments. Copies of the APN Strategic Plan are available from the secretariat. photo caption See the picture(Participants
of the 4th IGM in Kobe) Back to the contents of APN Newsletter June 1999 GLOBAL CHANGE IMPACTS CENTRE FOR SOUTHEAST ASIA (IC-SEA) With three-and-a-half year funding support from the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), IC-SEA, under the auspices of GCTE, started its operations at SEAMEO BIOTROP, Bogor, Indonesia on 1 October 1995. As the first regional centre in the developing regions established to assess the impacts of global change and their implications for the sustainable management of terrestrial ecosystems, IC-SEA's objectives are two-fold: (i) to assist scientists in the Southeast Asian region to build their own capacity in assessing the impacts of global change on terrestrial ecosystems, including agriculture, production forestry and nature reserve systems; and (ii) to promote planning for sustainable development and biodiversity conservation in a rapidly changing global environment. Regional Network IC-SEA has undertaken a set of integrated activities to produce a regional network of competent research teams. This network of institutions and people encompasses seven countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Lao PDR, Vietnam, and Philippines. In collaboration with these teams IC-SEA is now conducting state-of-the-science analyses of the impacts of global environmental change on terrestrial ecosystems. Capacity Building IC-SEA uses an integrated suite of activities to achieve its objectives: training courses on aspects of impacts assessment, drawing on the expertise of GCTE scientists from around the world; visits to individual research groups in the region to give technical advice on data management, analysis and modeling; fellowship and equipment grants to support the development of national teams; the development of electronic information systems to share data, models and discuss policy issues across the region. In the past three years the Impacts Centre has launched sets of activities around four themes. The first three dealt with global change impacts on specific ecosystems, namely, tropical forest dynamics and production, rice production, and complex agroecosystems. The fourth considered the integration of these with the conservation of biodiversity at the landscape scale. During 1998 these were further extended with cross-cutting workshops on soil environment, and pest and diseases. Training Workshops Six training workshops have been conducted over three years with a total of 152 participants. The training workshops were designed to provide teams with an overview of the analytical and modeling tools available to conduct impacts assessments. The course leaders and staff at the Impacts Centre work with the participants to help them match tools to their specific problems. The key output of training workshops is a set of proposals for further study. Fellowships The fellowship programme is for scientists from the Southeast Asia region to conduct work relevant to the analysis of the impacts of global environmental change on terrestrial ecosystems. This includes support for participation in conferences and workshops as well as short to medium term study visits to global change laboratories around the world. A total of 32 grants had been awarded under three rounds of fellowships funded by AusAID. Equipment Grants The goal of the equipment grants program is to provide support to scientists working on assessing the impacts of global change. Priority has been given to supporting modeling and analytical studies, and the grants have therefore been largely for the purchase of computer hardware and software. To date awards have been made to teams in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand and Vietnam. Policy Support An important goal of the Impacts Centre was to ensure, from the start, that its work is policy-relevant. It is essential that policymakers are closely involved with the design and execution of Centre activities, as well as benefiting directly from the Centre's products. IC-SEA has successfully organised 2 major science-policy activities. External funds were obtained from START to hold a Workshop on Living with Global Change: Improving the Links between Science and Policy in Southeast Asia in August 1996. In response to the transboundary haze and fires during 1997, IC-SEA launched a series of activities to promote on-going collaboration between the scientific, resource management and policy communities in Southeast Asia. Collaborative Research The most enduring and efficient way to develop capacity in the region is to stimulate and support collaborative research on assessing and adapting to the impacts of global environmental change. The Impacts Centre through workshops and follow-up activities has generated numerous proposals and plans for further studies, some of which are now being incorporated into the research and development activities of participating institutions. Looking Forward The first three-and-a-half years (Phase 1) have been successful for the Impacts Centre. The achievement was not only marked by the completion of the scheduled capacity-building activities, but also by the formation of the both regional and international networks. These have undoubtedly facilitated the policy support activities carried out simultaneously by IC-SEA and triggered collaborative research currently undertaken and planned for the future. Unlike Phase 1, collaborative research support and co-ordination will dominate the activities for the next phase. However, capacity-building and policy support activities will still be carried out as they play an important role in achieving the region's sustainable development under rapidly changing global environment. For more information please contact: Daniel Murdiyarso, Programme Head Back to the contents of APN Newsletter June 1999 See picture(The Impacts Centre Staff) APN Symposium and Workshop - 20-22 October 1999, Kobe, Japan To mark the inauguration of the new APN Secretariat office in Kobe, the APN will host a one day symposium, entitled "The Challenges of Global Environmental Change for the Asia-Pacific Region: A Scientific Assessment". The symposium will feature keynote speeches from scientists and policy makers from throughout the region. This will be followed by two scoping workshops to develop research projects in the APN priority areas of Human Dimensions and Climate Change & Variability. It is planned that the workshops will address in particular Cities & Industrial Transformation and Climate Variability and Agriculture Prediction (CLIMAG). Further details of the Symposium and Workshops will appear in the September newsletter, and are also available from the APN Secretariat. Back to the contents of APN Newsletter June 1999 GUEST ARTICLE: 1998 FLOODS IN CHINA URGE THE PROMOTION ON STUDIES OF REGIONAL INTEGRATED ENVIRONMENT MODELING Helin Wei, Congbin Fu and Zhibin Wan, START Regional Center for Temperate East Asia Despite concerns about global change, many key scientific and policy issues related to the environment are developed, considered and ultimately implemented on regional scales. At these levels, regional interactions of physical, biological and social systems play a critical role in defining the problems that must be resolved. These interactions can be well described and simulated by Regional Integrated Environment Models (hereafter referred to RIEMS). RIEMS are conceptual and mathematical models which include components of the physical environment, biological interactions and human decision-making and its consequences. Disciplinary, regional or partly coupled models now exist in the atmospheric, ecological and social sciences. Work is in progress to couple these disciplinary models in response to a variety of contemporary environmental problems. These views have been accepted by more and more scientists and policy-makers over the world. However, due in part to their complexity and expense, RIEMS are still far from getting the attention they deserve, particularly in some developing countries. The 1998 floods in China are a good example to illustrate why RIEMS are important. In the summer of 1998, China suffered almost its largest damage since 1949, due to the floods which swept across the whole Yangtze, Nenjiang and Songhuajiang River Valleys. It was reported by China Daily that the floods killed at least 2,000 people, drove 14 million from their homes and destroyed 11 million acres of croplands in a nation that perpetually struggles to feed its 1.2 billion citizens. Chinese authorities have quantified the situation in terms of how many people have been directly affected by the floods - 240 million. By comparison, the population of the United States is roughly 250 million. These severe floods were in no question generated in anomalous synoptic and climatic circumstances. Heavy rains continued to pound large stretches of the country as a succession of low-pressure systems seemingly marched in lockstep across China's northern and western reaches. The additional waters poured into already overfed rivers and streams, sending one flood crest after another crashing down the mighty Yangtze and other lesser-known rivers. Climatic factors include global warming, a strong El Nino event during 1997 to 1998, extremely high snow cover over the Tibetan Plateau and the anomalous performance of blocking high in the midlatitude and subtropic high over the Northwest Pacific during this season. For example, warmer global temperatures are leading to faster snow melt along the Yangtze headwaters in the Tibetan Plateau, which often kickstarts the flood season. But for decades, the floods - especially along the Yangtze, the world's third largest river - have been a way of life for millions of Chinese, an annual scourge that arrives with the summer's monsoon rainfalls. From the perspective of meteorology and hydrology the same precipitation and flow discharge as this year and even greater can be found in previous years. Why were this year's floods among the worst in Chinese history? This cannot be confined solely to natural factors, and must be influenced by anthropogenic impact on land and climate. There are two significant land use changes along the Yangtze River Valley in recent years. Due to population pressure in eastern and southern China, the human encroachment and development have been allowed in places that heretofore had been ceded to the flood waters. For example, tens of millions of homes and businesses have been built along the Yangtze flood plain, essentially hemming in the river and stealing its high-water outlets. Additionally, fully 85 percent of the Yangtze's original forest cover has been clear-cut. As a result, heavy run-off from torrential rains is continually pushing massive quantities of silt into the river. This raises water levels which, in turn, force flood control officials to constantly raise the height of the surrounding levees. Besides controlling erosion, the trees also absorbed the heavy rains and controlled their migration into the soil. With the trees largely supplanted by buildings and blacktops, the rains have nowhere to go but directly into increasingly constricted rivers and streams - a recipe for massive flooding. Fortunately, after last year's damage the Chinese government has taken steps to prohibit forest cutting and the encroachment of reservoir areas for the occurrence of floods. But if policy-makers can think of the environment in an integrated way based on some scientific research before they make environmental policy, the damage due to natural disasters can be reduced to a greater extent. From this case study one can see that RIEMS are an important tool for helping solve environmental problems and providing a scientific basis for policy decision making. Accordingly we feel the study of RIEMS should be further promoted. Under the support of Chinese Academy of Sciences, START and APN, a group in START Regional Center for Temperature East Asia has already developed a first version of a Regional Integrated Environment Model for Monsoon Asia that includes atmospheric, biospheric, chemical and hydrological components and their interactions. The optimal model we seek to develop can be illustrated in Fig.1.
Figure 1. Structure for the Optimal Regional Integrated Environmental Model Back to the contents of APN Newsletter June 1999 INTEGRATED ASSESSMENT OF CLIMATE CHANGE - WORKSHOPS IN CHINA AND INDIA P. R. Shukla,Indian Instit.ute of Management
Climate change due to rising concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted by human activities has emerged as a vital challenge for global change policy making. Developing nations in Asia are experiencing rapidly rising emissions of GHGs. Many nations are also vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Global policy analysis shows that Asia holds the key to strategic actions for mitigation of emissions and adaptation to impacts. Analysis of climate change requires integration of diverse disciplines covering social as well as natural sciences, besides spatial and temporal integration. Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) are important tools for delineating consistent and practical climate change mitigation policies and actions. IAMs have been used in industrialized nations for climate change policy analysis during the past several years, however developing countries have little experience in use of these models. These workshops were organized to bridge this gap by building capacity for the use of IAMs for climate change policy analysis in Asian developing countries. Other important objectives of the workshops included sharing of experiences among climate change researchers and policy makers in Asia and to develop a network for future interactions. The first training workshop was organized by the Center for Energy-Environment and Climate Change Researches (CEEC) of the Energy Research Institute, China from October 11 to 13,1998. The workshop was attended by 55 participants, including 15 international experts. The second workshop was organized by Indian Institute of Management, India from February 1 to 4, 1999. This workshop was attended by 54 participants including 14 international experts. Participants in both workshops were drawn from among policy makers, modeling experts and researchers working in the area of climate change science and policy. Model structure, data requirements and policy applications of IAMs and component models were presented in the context of climate change policy needs in the Asia-Pacific region. A number of different IAMs were presented including the Asia-Pacific Integrated Model (AIM) developed at National Institute for Environment Studies (NIES, Tsukuba, Japan); MiniCAM developed at Battelle, Pacific Northwest National Laboratories, USA; IMAGE developed at RIVM, Netherlands; ICAM developed at Carnegie Mellon University, U.S.A. Several other component models were also presented. An added importance of the workshop theme derives from the policy support provided by IAMs to climate change negotiations. Globally, IAMs have provided insights into climate change policies and mitigation strategies in the context of Kyoto Protocol under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). These two workshops have helped to enhance the capacity for IAM analysis in Asian developing nations and thereby have aided in the development of national and regional climate change mitigation strategies. For further details please contact the APN Secretariat. The above project was one of 12 funded by APN in 1998/99. RESEARCH ACTIVITIES ON LAND USE IN TEMPERATE EAST ASIA Dr. Dennis Ojima, Colorado State University, USA The LUTEA Training Workshop, co-funded by the Asian Pacific Network and START, was held in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, June 1 - 13, 1998. The objective was to provide to young scientists in the region with a set of technical tools (i.e., remote sensing, geographic information system, and ecosystem modeling) to integrate information from various disciplines and data sources for land use/cover change studies. The workshop provided an opportunity to learn these techniques from experienced professionals from around the world and for students to learn from each other how best to integrate the techniques and to develop more integrated studies for land use and cover change analysis. The participants came from a variety of disciplines including social scientists studying nomadic pastoral land use systems, remote sensing specialists characterizing land cover patterns, forest ecologists studying forest management, and biogeochemists interested in the feedback between land use, carbon dynamics, and greenhouse gas fluxes. These 18 young scientists came from a variety of LUTEA countries including China, Korea, Mongolia, Russia and the United States. The workshop instructors came from several research facilities active in global change studies - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, USGS EROS Data Center, CIESIN, and the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University. The techniques covered during the training course included remote sensing, geographical information systems, and ecosystem modeling. Each of the participants was given an opportunity to use databases and models provided to develop land use maps, develop land cover maps from AVHRR data, and to model various ecosystems. The remote sensing data sets from the AVHRR receiving station facilities of the Mongolian Ministry of Nature and Environment provided an opportunity to work with actual AVHRR data and to develop land cover images based on these data sets, rather than using already processed data. Geographical data was provided to each participant and maps of various regions were developed by the participants. The participants were successful in completing the training tasks and enjoyed learning from each other, as well as from the instructors. In additional to the hands-on training, the course also made a short field trip to a Mongolian camp in a mountain area outside of Ulaanbaatar to learn about Mongolian pastoral life and the natural beauty of the Mongolian landscape. We were able see the various grazing systems used in Mongolia and experience the beautiful forest-steppe ecosystems of the region. We also used the opportunity to interact with the Mongolian scientific community involved in land use and land cover change studies. We organized a joint Meeting of the Mongolian scientists and workshop participants to discuss the LUTEA activities and how to promote them in Mongolia. The success of the workshop was helped by the donation of several computer workstations and PCs to the remote sensing group in the Ministry of Nature and Environment and other Mongolian Institutes of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences through a joint Japanese-US donation. Funding for the workshop was provided by START and APN. Additional support came from NASA, USGS, US Embassy and the Mongolian Ministry of Nature and Environment. We hope to see the workshop fellows continue to collaborate with LUTEA research studies in the future and will attempt to facilitate this with additional research efforts. For further details please contact the APN Secretariat. The above project was one of 12 funded by APN in 1998/99. Back to the contents of APN Newsletter June 1999 INDUSTRIAL TRANSFORMATION - WORKSHOPS IN SOUTH ASIA AND EAST ASIA R K Pachauri, Director, Tata Energy Research Institute, New Delhi, India. The IHDP Industrial Transformation project aims to understand the human drivers and mechanisms that could enable a transformation of the industrial system towards sustainability and, in physical terms, to decouple industrial activities from their environmental impacts. In 1998 the APN sponsored two workshops (in New Delhi and in Kita-Kysushu) to discuss the IT research agenda and identify potential core projects for implementation at the regional and global levels. The imperatives for change towards more sustainable patterns of development are becoming clearer and more urgent every day. While the developed countries will have to focus on reduced use of all forms of materials, much lower levels of emissions of greenhouse gases and elimination of hazardous wastes, the developing countries whose major priority is to remove poverty face a somewhat different set of challenges. The first challenge, of course, is to increase incomes, ensure equitable distribution and enlarge access for their growing populations to basic services such as supply of drinking water, health care, education, fuel, fodder and food. All of this can only take place if incomes increase, promoting the development of infrastructure and facilities that the developed world was able to establish many decades ago. Yet, developing countries need to pursue these objectives with much lower levels of resource use and environmental pollution, because, firstly, the costs of not correcting damage created today would be much higher tomorrow and secondly, they can benefit from the experience of the developed countries over past two decades both in creating appropriate institutions and employing environmental friendly technologies. This experience can help countries of the third world to adopt a lower trajectory path in terms of environmental damage without sacrificing the goal of higher incomes. Essentially, developing countries need to put in place policies, institutional changes and technological innovations that would allow growth at a lower variant of the Environmental Kuznets Curve recorded by the developed countries when they were at similar stages of development. In Figure 1 the lower path indicated would be the desired trajectory that developing countries need to follow. One major initiative in bringing about changes in the right direction would be through the articulation and implementation of enlightened policies towards rural industrialization and the use of renewable energy in rural areas. Most of the developed world has attained high levels of growth with rapid increase in urbanization and the growth of suburban communities that are basically their engines of economic activity. Most developing countries, particularly those that are populous would find it disastrous to adopt such a path. Also, the towns and cities of the developing world are characterized by income disparities which result in a complex set of social, economic, environmental and cultural problems. The answer lies in transforming Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of development beginning in the villages to a new form that employs modern science and technology for creating decentralized solutions and job opportunities in rural areas. There is in any case a growing trend towards decentralized production of goods and services connected by modern information technology, and the economies of scale that existed earlier do not hold today. Indeed it is the need of the hour for intellectual efforts to be focused on how the billions of rural poor living in the developing countries can be provided solutions that would not uproot them from their traditional locations. Finance, technology, organizational skills and political leadership would be required on an unprecedented scale to make this happen. The time to start is now before the challenge becomes insurmountable and chaos results from inaction and lack of initiative in the required direction. Accordingly the India Workshop identified (i) analysing energy and materials flow, (ii) transforming the rural energy sector and (iii) transport sector changes for improved air quality as the three major areas for future research activities. TERI is presently coordinating further elaboration of these topics into pre-proposals. For further details please contact the APN Secretariat. The above project was one of 12 funded by APN in 1998/99.
Back to the contents of APN Newsletter June 1999 OCEANIA 1. The proceedings of the 5-9 October Inaugural START-Oceania workshop is now ready and is being dispatched to all workshop participants and other relevant agencies. This 213 page document contains a copy of the workshop report, list of participants, full texts of all the papers presented during the opening session, the plenary sessions, and the special session and a standardised summary of all the 10 project proposals developed during the workshop in the two thematic areas: Climate Change and Coastal Zone management. Working groups will be approaching funding agencies for support to carry out the projects. 2. Following the recent advertisement of the position, a Program Assistant for START Oceania will shortly be appointed. The Program Assistant will also act as the APN Liaison Officer. Compiled from information received from Dr. Kanayathu Koshy, Chair, START Oceania
SOUTH ASIA 1. An international workshop on ﾒLong term changes and trends in the atmosphereﾓ, was hosted and sponsored by Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, India from 16th-19th February, 1999. About fifty oral and 35 poster presentations were made, mainly focusing on the long term trends in the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere and the ionosphere due to anthropogenic activities as well as natural processes. The presentations were on aerosol loading in the atmosphere and its effect, ozone changes, forcing of greenhouse gases and natural events on the chemical composition. 2. A regional workshop on Estuarine modeling and coastal zone management was organised by the Sri Lanka national committee of the IGBP in Colombo from 28th April to 1st May 1999. It was jointly supported by international START and LOICZ programmes. The topics of discussions and paper presentations included the regional perspectives of the LOICZ in terms of drivers, pressures, impact and response, priorities of each nation in the south Asian region, regional priorities and challenges, biogeochemical and nutrient cycling, coastal zone management and social dimensions of coastal change. 3. Historical Perspectives of Land-Use Land-Cover Change in South East Asia. This meeting was organised at Surajkund near Delhi from 11th to 13th April 1999. It was organised by National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi in association with START. 50 participants of various disciplines from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and Australia attended. The aim to provide a common platform for social and material scientists interested in land use science. Compiled from report by SASCOM Liaison Officer Dr. Sumana Bhattacharya
TEMPERATE EAST ASIA 1. The LUTEA (Land Use for Temperate East Asia)/TEACOM project convened a scientific steering committee meeting during March 31-April 2, 1999 at NREL/CSU, USA. The recent research and network activities contributing to LUTEA were reviewed. New projects such as: 1) biodiversity and ecosystem function of the Mongolian Steppe, 2) net carbon flux and storage of the TEA region; and 3) land cover analysis through high spatial and spectral resolution techniques were discussed. List of LUTEA presentations, visiting scientists, publications, projects and key contact persons will be compiled to be to incorporated into the developing LUTEA website. For the detail information about the meeting, please contact directly Dr. Dennis Ojima, Chairperson of LUTEA project at: dennis@nrel.colostate.edu 2. A working report on the START CLIMAG pilot study was recently submitted to START secretariat by the principal investigator Dr. Qian Ye, START TEA-RC/CAS. Based on this study, it is recommended that more efforts should be put into database construction. Most important, this work finds that many factors which have significant impacts on wheat yield, are also closely related with climate variation but have not been clearly addressed in research. It is necessary to further develop the regional integrated model so that more processes and factors, which are associated with wheat production, can be studied. For the detail information, please contact Qian Ye at: qiany@ast590.tea.ac.cn, or qy@cdc.noaa.edu 3. The Regional Climate Modeling Steering Committee (RCM-SC) of TEACOM is going to hold a meeting in ICTP, Italy this June. The main purpose of the meeting is to initiate a new Regional Model Inter-comparison Project (RMIP) for the further study of RCM. 4. It has been decided in consultation with START and APN secretariat that the next TEACOM meeting will be held October 18-19, 1999 in Kobe, Japan in conjunction with the symposium for the opening of APN office. Compiled from report by TEACOM Liaison Officer Mr. Zhibin Wan Back to the contents of APN Newsletter June 1999 SARCS (Southeast Asia) SASCOM (South Asia) TEACOM (Temperate East Asia) OTHER CONTACTS START Oceania Back to the contents of APN Newsletter June 1999 Randy Helten, a self-styled Eco-warrior who worked at the APN Secretariat from its early beginnings recently decided the time had come to pack his Harmonica and return to Canada after 10 years in Japan. In his time Randy outlasted 3 different APN Directors and saw the APN move from the germ of an idea to its current stage of development, while also helping to manage Friends of the Earth Japan. His energetic contributions and his karaoke style will be sorely missed. On behalf of all who are or have been involved with the APN to date, we wish Randy and his wife Mariko the best of luck for their new life in Canada, and we hope that we will see them again before too long. At the same time we welcome Connie Chiang, the new APN Liaison Officer for Southeast Asia. Connie has a Masters in Environmental Management, and has previously worked as a UNEP Consultant in Thailand and a Research Technician in the US.
APN Governmental Focal Points/Contacts (FP) and Scientific Planning Group Members (SPG) Back to the contents of APN Newsletter June 1999 PROJECTS FUNDED BY APN IN 1999/2000 The APN Fourth Inter-Governmental Meeting decided to fund 12 projects based on an APN budget consisting of about US$ 675,000 from the Environment Agency of Japan and US$ 325,000 from the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) provided via START. Projects may also be funded from other sources not noted here, including in-kind support from countries. |
Figure
1. Environmental Kuznets CurveFigure 1. Environmental Kuznets Curve