DATE / TIME:

2018/10/09 - 2018/10/11

Location:

Almaty, Kazakhstan

Co-Organisers: The event is organised within the framework of the Central Asia Water (CAWa) project, as part of the German Initiative for Central Asia (“Berlin Process”) and is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office.

Speaker

Dr Kai Schwärzel, Soil and Land-Use Management, UNU-FLORES

The conference intends to shed light on water-related and environmental challenges in Central Asia by bringing together the international scientific community with regional stakeholders and specialists from various disciplines and backgrounds. The interdisciplinary conference will cover a broad range of topics and will analyse and discuss the subject from both natural scientific and socioeconomic perspectives.

Dr Kai Schwärzel, who heads the Soil and Land-Use Management unit at UNU-FLORES, will speak on the effects of dryland plantation forests on evapotranspiration, soil water dynamics, seepage, and discharge in Session 3 on “Hydrology: Observations, Processes, Forecasting”.

Background

Central Asia faces big water-related challenges, among them water scarcity, degrading water quality, and inefficient water use. Climate change may even aggravate the situation. These challenges can be met only with a joint effort of all Central Asian states. The CAWa project intends to contribute to a sound scientific and a reliable regional data basis for the development of sustainable water management strategies in Central Asia.

To address these challenges, CAWa established a consortium of leading German and Central Asian geoscientific research institutions. Partners from Central Asian universities and state agencies complement the network.

The overarching objectives of the CAWa project include:

• Support informed decision making in land and water management through transparent data sets
• Promote regional and trans-sectoral cooperation
• Strengthen professional and methodological capacities of specialists and researchers

The CAWa project was launched in June 2008 and is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office as the scientific-technical component of the Water Initiative for Central Asia (“Berlin Process”). Following the first and second project phases (2008–2011, and 2012–2014, respectively), the project was completed by the end of 2017.

As the scientific-technical component of the “Berlin Process”, CAWa closely cooperates with the political-institutional component implemented by GIZ in the “Transboundary Water Management in Central Asia” Programme, and the educational component represented by the regional master programme “Integrated Water Resources Management” at the German-Kazakh University in Almaty.

Related Website:
Event website