Call for Abstracts: Water Security and Climate Change Conference 2024
The Water Security and Climate Change Conference(WSCC24) will be held on09 – 11 October 2024at the Justus Liebig University in Gießen, Germany. The WSCC conference, an annual event since 2016, has become a notable academic platform for scientific, technical, and policy-oriented discourses and discussions.
This year's conference topic, "Water Management for Urban-Rural Resilience," aims to explore how to ensure sustainable water supplies for both growing cities and the rural areas that support them, framed by threeconference themes:
- Integrated Urban-Rural Water Management
- Agriculture and Resource-Use Transformation along the Urban-Rural Continuum
- From Data to Decision: Building a Sustainable Water Future
The abstract submissiondeadline is June 15, 2024.
The "Call for Abstracts" document provides detailed guidelines and instructions for abstract submission. Further information can also be found on the conference webpage:
www.uni-giessen.de/wscc
Call for Applications to Summer School “Quantitative analysis of agricultural development in Central Asia”
The Summer School on“Quantitative Analysis of Agricultural Development in Central Asia”will take place from September 30 to October 4, 2024, in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. The venue is the Center for Agricultural Reform and Innovation Studies (CARIS) at Samarkand Agroinnovations and Research University, Uzbekistan.
The Summer School will combine theoretical lectures and practical exercises with discussion sessions on current agricultural development issues in Central Asia. The participants will learn to use statistical software to analyze agricultural survey data. The Summer school is open to any MSc or PhD student interested in the agricultural development of Central Asia. Participants currently residing in the five post-Soviet Central Asian countries, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, will be given preference. The knowledge of the English language is a prerequisite to participation since the seminar will be held in English throughout. The TRANS-LIVESTOCK project will cover the costs of accepted participants and include visa fees, travel costs, accommodation, and food (including meals and coffee breaks) at the venue. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) financially supports the summer school.
The application deadline isJune 15, 2024. Further details and instructions for application are available at: www.uni-giessen.de/zeu/translivestock
Research Paper: Roles of innovation in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals: A bibliometric analysis
Dr. Gulnara Dzhunushalieva and Prof. Ramona Teuber published an article in the Journal of Innovation & Knowledge.
- This paper presents a bibliometric analysis to investigate the role of innovations/STI in connection to SDGs in the existing literature.
- The authors employed a three-pronged approach combining bibliometric analysis, text-mining, and SDG mapping analysis.
- The unexpected finding that only 24 innovation-related SDG targets were detected in the literature suggests a potential research gap in explicitly linking innovation to the SDGs.
- The lower occurrence and weak links of innovation-related keywords in the co-occurrence analysis indicate that explicitly mentioning innovation in titles may not always lead to relevant connections with the SDGs or sustainable development.
For more insights, the article is available here.
Policy Brief: The United Nations 2023 Water Conference: Lessons from the Aral Sea Basin
Dr. Aliya Assubayeva, in cooperation with Bota Sharipova, Prof. Naho Mirumachi, and Lucy Everitt, published a policy brief on the United Nations (UN) Water Conference in March 2023 that marked a significant landmark in global water governance. However, despite efforts towards inclusivity and over 700 pledges garnered to cooperate and solve the world’s water issues, criticisms surrounding the event regarding accountability and ambition have arisen.
This policy brief examines Central Asian water governance through the case of the Aral Sea Basin states—a region drastically affected by human-induced water scarcity—highlighting challenges and disagreements brought to the fore at global arenas like the UN Water Conference. The authors analyze the basin countries’ experiences to stress the necessity for proactive involvement of Global South countries in global water governance and make recommendations for future global event organizers to better foster cooperation among countries and accelerate progress towards SDG6.
Read the policy brief here.
Participation at the EGU24 General Assembly
This year, the EGU24 General Assembly welcomed about 20 thousand registered attendees. Researchers of the SDGnexus Network actively participated at the conference in Vienna as presenters and conveners.
- Dr. Aliya Assubayeva presented the study on EU engagement for sustainable water management in the Aral Sea basin in the HS.5.1.1 Water resources policy and management – System solutions for uncertain futures.
- Dr. Alicia Correa presented preliminary findings of the study on Spatial and Temporal Dynamics of Agricultural Water Footprint in a Changing Climate: A CORDEX-SPARE: WATER Analysis in the session HS2.3.2 Water quality and availability modeling, risk analysis and decision support under current conditions and future scenarios
- Kalina Fonseca presented the research findings on Improving water-related ecosystem services to developing country communities through nature-based solutions in the session ITS4.4/ERE6.4 Community-Led Science and Nature-based Solutions for Transformative Change.
