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ADAPTS conference 2009
July 08/07/09
During week 27, the annual ADAPTS Workshop was held in Accra, Ghana. Project partners from Peru, Brazil, Botswana, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Ghana and the Netherlands came together for a five day workshop on climate change adaptation and water management. During his key note address, the Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing, Mr A. Abongo, stated that water resource management, climate variability and change, water for food security, planning and research are key focus areas in Ghanaian water policy.
Connecting Delta Cities, International Workshop
New York City, 9-10 June 2009
The workshop provided a stage for the state of the art science and policies in the area of adaptation to climate change in several key global cities. Innovations and bottlenecks in adaptation policies will be addressed as well as areas with potential for extended knowledge exchange. The outcome of the meeting will be collected in two books: one book for a broad audience (to be published in September 2009) and one in depth scientific book (March 2010). Both books describe the key issues related to successful implementation of adaptation strategies. To illustrate the development and implementation of adaptation measures, the books provide a comparative assessment between the cities of Rotterdam, Jakarta and New York showing climate change effects, solutions and their ‘pro’s and cons’.
Cluster research content
Adaptation can significantly reduce impacts of climate change and is seen as an important part of societal response to global climate change. The cluster ‘Water, spatial planning and adaptation’ focuses the development and assessment of adaptation strategies in water management that aim at reducing vulnerability to climate change.
Within this context, the way space is used is increasingly seen as key to manage water related risk such as floods and droughts. Hence, since climate change will affect water resources by an increase in extreme events, new adaptations are needed that combine the effective use of space with innovative water management measures.
The Cluster on Water and Adaptation is situated at the Institute for Environmental Studies of the VU University in Amsterdam.