12 December 2016, Paro, Bhutan — Driven by the shared understanding that sustained coordinated regional collaboration is key to ensuring a resilient and sustainable future, twelve national and regional policy and research institutions come together today in Bhutan to explore effective approaches to collectively enhancing global change research and capacity development in South Asia.

The meeting is organised by Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN) and hosted by the National Environment Commission Secretariat, Royal Government of Bhutan as part of a partnership-building initiative conceptualised and implemented by APN’s sub-regional committee for South Asia. For the first time since the launch of the committee in 2009, representatives from twelve policy and research institutes and organisations based in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are invited to take charge in jointly mapping out regionally-relevant issues of common interest and formulating the designs of joint activities to address these issues.

The goals of the collaborative approach are to better support South Asian countries to identify and assess shared priority needs and to develop the capacity of scientists, practitioners and the public to collaborate, communicate and take action to adapt to and mitigate global climate change in South Asia.

This collaborative approach was initiated as a result of the sixth meeting of APN’s South Asia Sub-Regional Committee in 2015, at which the committee decided to reach out to organisations in the sub-region that share a similar vision and interest with APN.

Before the meeting, a questionnaire survey and a series of teleconferences were conducted and several pressing issues of common concern were identified. These include water resources management, sustainable agriculture, monsoon variability, and gender issues within these domains. The meeting is expected to identify key problems, objectives, outputs and expected outcomes of potential joint activities.

Back-to-back with the collaborative approach meeting and the seventh South Asia Sub-Regional Committee meeting, a Proposal Development Training Workshop will be held from 14-16 December 2016. The workshop is organised by APN annually to develop the capacity of young and early-career scientists to prepare competitive regional research proposals to access research funding and to effectively manage project activities and communicate their research results to various types of audiences.

The Proposal Development Training Workshop 2016 is jointly funded by APN and the PAGES (Past Global Changes) project, an international project that aims to coordinate and promote research on past global change in order to make predictions for the future.

Note to Editors

About APN

The Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN) is a network of 22 Member Country governments that promotes global change research in the region, increases developing country involvement in that research, and strengthens interactions between the science community and policy makers.

APN was established in 1996 and its Secretariat is based in Kobe, Japan. APN supports its member countries via annual open calls for research and capacity development proposals under its core programmes and frameworks, and by organising events such as science-policy dialogues and proposal development training workshops to engage the participation of scientists and policy makers in achieving its science and policy agendas.

Additional resources

For more information, please contact:

• Karma Tshering, Head, Policy and Programming Services, National Environment Commission, Royal Government of Bhutan, email: [email protected]
• Yukihiro Imanari, Head, Division of Development and Institutional Affairs, APN Secretariat, email: [email protected]
• Taniya Koswatta, Coordinator, APN Secretariat, email: [email protected]
• Xiaojun Deng, Programme Officer for Communication and Development, email: [email protected]