Summary info:
The impacts of climatic extremes are well known to water resource managers, especially in arid and semi-arid regions or flood prone areas. However, as part of the climate change, along with the increasing mean temperatures and changes in annual and inter-annual distribution of rainfall, there is an increase in frequency and intensity of extreme events. These issues will be explored in a video conference session, bringing people from different background and expertise at a time. The Video Conference sessions will build on and draw on speakers at the expo, bring in other senior practitioners from different background and connect government, non-governmental staff and community leaders who are confronted with the impacts of climate change and climatic extremes. For each session, 5 countries will be connected. This live session will be in the format of knowledge exchange, cross country dialogue, interview with the experts and debate.
Innovative approaches for dealing with impacts of climate change
When dealing with impacts of climate change, people often think about developing and/or modifying scenarios and models that provide the projected changes in climatic parameters. However, the time horizons for these types of outputs are 2050 to 2100. Although these types of outputs can provide general idea of the projected climate that the countries might be facing, they are not necessarily useful for short-medium term planning often faced by water managers. Some interesting and different approaches have been used by countries to better manage the risk of ongoing and future changes in the climate and reduce the risk of erosion of the present development gains.
Through this dialogue we will explore the approaches being taken from a political and from technical-development perspective. We will extend the discussion to gain a view of what many developing countries face and how they can use the knowledge gained for their own use as well share what they have been doing. Specific questions will include:
  • What were some of the reasons the changes were made in water management?
  • How important was climate variability and change in these decisions?
  • How was civil society, non-governmental organizations involved?
  • What were the biggest challenges and how were they overcome?
  • Were there key times/places when somebody was the champion for the changes?
  • How long did all these changes take to go from the small discussion to implementation?
  • What has been the role (if any) of public-private partnerships?
  • What are some issues that still need to be acted on?
There are some small scale community-based initiatives in developing countries that provide useful lessons. A short film will be shown to show one such example.

Session#6 Agenda

Tuesday, July 22, 2008 Hour - 1
Arrival of participants
Room: Bromo 1 The World Bank Office Jakarta.
15.00 / Introduction of Zaragoza event
A short movie from the Spanish organizers.
15.03 / Objective, scope, design of the Video Conference session
By Amreeta Regmi
15.06 / Film 1 : Climate Change and Water
A short movie from the Spanish organizers.
15.15 / First set of interviews
15.45 / Film 2 : Community approaches to water management
Short movie from the Spanish organizers.
16.00 / End of first hour
16.00 / Coffee Break
Tuesday,July 22, 2008 Hour - 2
Second set of interview question
16:15 / Discussion / Debate on 2 pre designed question on this topic
Managed by Amreeta Regmi and anchored by Chief Moderator at Zaragoza
17:00 / End of second hour
Thursday, July 22, 2008 Hour - 3
Summary and way forward
By Moderator ( Amreeta Regmi)
17.30 End of agenda for Expo Zaragoza in The World Bank Office Jakarta.

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