A programme of the ACP Group of States, with the financial assistance of the European Union.
CODWAP – 3rdInformalMeetingand Sardinia 2009 conference attendance
October 4-9th, 2009, S. Margherita di Pula (Cagliari), Sardinia, Italy
Meeting Agenda on October 8, 2009
TIME / WHAT / WHO11:00 / Project progress:
Overview of 1st semester activities and planning of future steps / Stamatia Kontogianni
11:30 / MSc Course Programme implementation
■Outline syllabus, entry requirements and others
■Future steps to implementation / Romeela Mohee/ All
Stamatia Kontogianni/ All
12:00 / Discussion- Setting of deadlines
(MSC course) / All
13:00 / Lunch break / All
14:30 / Preparatory steps for International Conference implementation / Stamatia Kontogianni/ All
15:00 / Website implementation / Sebastian Wolff/ All
15:30 / Discussion- Setting of deadlines (International Conference) / All
16:30 / End of session
3rdInformal Meeting Minutes1
/ ACP-EU Cooperation Programme in Higher Education (EDULINK) /A programme of the ACP Group of States, with the financial assistance of the European Union.
1Participants
Organisation / ParticipantsAUT / Asst. Prof. Avraam Karagiannidis
Stamatia Kontogianni
Eleni Trentsiou
BUAS / Prof. Henning Albers
Sebastian Wolff
UoM / Prof. Romeela Mohee
UNITECH / Prof. Chris Kobal
TUD / Prof. Bernd Bilitewski
Christoph Wuensch
CALRECOVERY / Dr. Luis Diaz
2Summary
The 3rd CODWAP informal meeting was nested within the Sardinia 2009, 12thInternational Waste Management and Landfill Symposiumin S. Margherita di Pula (Cagliari), Sardinia, Italy. This arrangement was already foreseen explicitly in the CODWAP proposal, in order to offer the project participants the parallel opportunity to attend one of the most established international conferences in the project thematic field. CODWAP activities included a full-day meeting of all partners as well as numerous further bilateral and multilateral informal meetings of individual partners before and after the full-day meeting; they entailed the following issues:
-Exchange of experiences, facts and needs for implementing planned activities.
-Discussion on preparatory steps for implementing the Post graduate programme.
-Discussion on the curriculum material development (structure, contents, etc).
-Discussion on preparatory steps for the 1st International Conference on Waste management in Developing Countries.
In parallel, CODWAP partners attended conference sessions (some also on solid waste management in developing countries) and also made certain oral and poster presentations. The only deviation from the scheduled attendance refered to SL due to difficulties in timely obtaining visas to enter Italy.
3Minutes of October 8th meeting
11:00- 13:00 / Post Graduate programme discussionStamatia Kontogianni (SK): Welcoming address to the 3rd informal CODWAP meeting.
Avraam Karagiannidis (AK): It was a great achievement arranging this meeting here in Sardinia. In 7 months from now we will have the 2nd regular meeting of the project in Bremen, Germany, so I think it is a good chance to discuss and agree for certain preparatory steps for the project activities implementation and determine deadlines for them. We can now check / validate the agenda and the issues for discussion.
SK: The first issue regards the Post Graduate Programme (PGP) implementation: the structure and the final selection of modules’ titles and the appropriate deadlines for the modules’ implementation by partners. After the Thessaloniki kick off meeting, AUT and BUAS worked together to compile a set of modules’ titles and an overall description. Then, you were all asked to indicate your preference on those more appropriate for Developing Countries. To remind you, the core modules initially chosen were and are listed below:
- Economies of waste management (planning instruments, ecological relevance, investment and treatment costs, etc.).
- Introduction to solid waste management (principles, waste characterization, recycling management).
- Thermal waste treatment (furnace technologies and flue-gas cleaning).
- Mechanical and biological waste treatment.
- Chemical treatment.
- Recycling management andresource management.
- Waste management systems (logistics, collection, transport, transfer, planning of waste management systems, pollution control and prevention, monitoring).
- Hazardous waste management/ Contaminated site treatment.
- Design of solid waste treatment facilities (design process, cost calculation, etc.).
- Research Methods for Engineers (Qualitative & Quantitative).
Furthermore, the elective modules originally chosen are the following:
- International environmental policy.
- Environmental economics.
- Geographical Information Systems (GIS).
- Sustainable Production and consuption
- Environmental management systems.
The elective modules are the ones which will also be used for training courses in Papua New Guinea and in Sierra Leone since they will focus on issues like mining waste and handling of special waste.
Luis Diaz(LD): I think that ‘Mechanical and biological waste treatment’ and ‘Chemical treatment’ can be combined into one. Furthermore, ‘landfilling’ should be explicitly includedas well.
Romeela Mohee (RM): Starting from the modules, I should say that core modules are the most important and they should be only 6 according to UoM requirements. I have prepared a document of what is needed in general [‘PGP structure’ (see Annex I)]. This particular structure is necessary for now in order to obtain the approval of the university. We can work on that and produce the final structure. Each of the modules should have at least a 2-line overview description. The structure should be approved by November 2009 in order to implement the programme.
(From this point on partners worked on finalising the exact post graduate programme modules’ structure. Results of this cooperation are presented in Annex I. Also presented in Annex II is the allocation ofresponsible partners for developing each of the modules).
RM: We should also define entry requirements for students who will participate in this course, courses’ duration as well as procedure and duration of the thesis implementation. We need students who know and have basic knowledge on the PGP issues. I think we should require students with Science degree. Regarding degrees, if a student will not succeed on all 6 courses, he/she will not obtain the PGP degree but may be awarded a particular certificate. For a masters degree, 36 credits are needed; each module corresponds to 3 credits, which means that we need 12 courses if we do not have a project (thesis). If we have a project, this another is 6-9 credits and then we can have 7-8 core modules and 2 modules electives. The thesis implementation should last for about 3-4 months, whereas the courses another 8-9 months before that.
SK: Having agreed on the modules’ structure, it is time to decide on the deadlines for the preparatory steps of the PGP implementation. During the kick off meeting we decided that the PGP will start on 1st October 2010 which means that modules should be fully prepared two months earlier the latest, in order to provide sufficient time for reviewing. Therefore, by 20 August 2010 all partners should have finalised the modules that they are responsible of.
RM: Regarding the potential participation of students in this course I have done the following research: After the Thessaloniki kick-off meeting, we decided to prepare a questionnaire and sent it to several funding agencies of my country in order to identify the need for such a PGP (see Annex III). The questionnaire was sent to 40 companies and agencies. So far, we only received 6 answers. Out of them we found out that even though some companies considered the PGP subject interesting, the main funding source for such educational actions (i.e. Mauritius’ Ministry of Environment and National Development Unit) declared that “…the programme is not appropriate explicitly for Mauritian context (due to Mauritius being a small island) … we prefer environmental management…”. However, there is already one another PGP like this running for 10 years and the “…market is saturated…”. The problem is thus, whether we will have students in this programme which is necessary in order to implement it and on the same time to fulfil our obligations to the CODWAP project. Also a second problem we face is that we need to run the PGP full-time for 1 year in order to finish by 2011. In Mauritius, interested people do not usually select to attend such programmes, because they need to work and have income once the get their basic degree; in the event that they wish to attend a PGP they choose a part- time (which lasts 2 years). This is due to local culture and cannot be easily changed.
AK: As a reminder, contractually, our responsibility is for a 1-year PGP.
SK: We may ask PMU to change the duration of the PGP but this will end up into not having the PGP results within the given project deadline; unless we start now which is impossible.
RM: Therefore, I think we must search for funding organisations in order to: fund (a) Mauritians and (b) students from other developing countries to attend this full-time 1-year course. I can discuss this issue with Prof. *** who is the EU commissioner for Africa and check the possibility and availability of African Union funding schemes that could allow 1 or 2 students from Africa to attend this course.
AK: This is an important milestone that we currently face.
LD: I can communicate with my contacts in Nairobi where……
RM: After further discussing the future PGP implementation with UoM authorities, they insisted that the PGP should be feasible, meaning that this can not be a free course but a paid course with at least 15 participants. Therefore, additional funding comes up once again as mandatory.
SK: Therefore, there is a need to check for funding schemes for students. The first attempt performed by us was to inform certain funding organisations from developing countries of our intention to run a PGP. Unfortunately, so far we either received a negative answer or no answer at all. (See Annex IV for the mail recipients).
RM: We should prepare a letter with the structure and the PGP aims in order to inform them on the structure as well.
LD: What about GTZ?We can ask them to sponsor students for this course.
AK: We can try to send this aforementioned (maybe two-page) summary of the PGP to all our contacts.
RM: Maybe we can also prepare a PGP brochure (electronic version) and send it via email.
AK: And we should perhaps change the PGP title from “Solid Waste management” to “Sustainable Waste Management”. Additionally we can address more students by combining different issues such as mining waste, low cost landfilling, Health Care Waste, etc, under this common umbrella.
Henning Albers: We could attract students from various regions. Not just Africa but from Asia as well.
AK: I believe we should implement a PGP practically-oriented and flexible in terms of duration and content. Something that is more tailored to the region needs. A conventional master course with students in Mauritius and hopefully we will be able to attract students from other areas. Maybe from Latin America too?
LD: I do not know yet about this. Mauritius is a good place but it is far away from everything.
RM: Yes. The country is near/in Africa but the people living in Africa cannot easily afford coming there. That is why it may be difficult to bring students to Mauritius. So is it agreed that the PGP should be titled “Sustainable Waste and Resource Management”?
ALL: Yes.
RM: Another issue we should discuss is who will teach in this PGP.
AK: This can be done by the CODWAP consortium participants on a concrete compact-course basis, similar to the training courses programmed for PNG and SL (e.g. two week teaching etc). Do you think we can have support by local staff, since this shapes up to be a paid course?
RM: We can check the availability and the possibility of this. It would be easier to have afternoon lectures from 13:00 to 18:00.
14:00- 15:30 / International Conference discussionAK: My vision for the CODWAP conference is that it can be repeated every 2 or 3 years but it is a thing that can be discussed and will mostly depend on the impact, acceptance and success of the first one.
SK: We have already proceeded with some preparatory steps for its approval; Romeela can describe the overall situation.
RM: The conference should be approved by the Ministry but we cannot write directly to the minister; the university chancellor should do it instead. There was a slight delay because after he received our letter, although he agreed, he had to resign for internal reasons. As a result, now we have a new chancellor and we had to convince him again; so he wrote to the minister and we shortly expect (or we require) a written confirmation of conference approval.
SK: I think we should define the dates more closely. During the kick-off meeting, we proposed September 2011.
RM: A reason for this is that we wanted to have the PGP thesis presentations at the time which some of us will supervise. So I guess that the end of September is the best date and we should decide its duration.
SK: What about the hotel prices in Mauritius during September.
RM: It is a high tourism month; in Mauritius all months are characterised by high tourism except from February where we have cyclones. Even now (October) the flights are full.
AK: I recently participated in R09 conference and I heard that the next R-conference might be held in Mauritius (R11). The dates are not available yet but we can consider our conference to be a back to back event to this, if this fits. We can contact them.
RM: But then we may not have many participants. Given also that Sardinia 2011 will be held on the 1st week of October… There are a lot events at the same time with ours and we will surely ‘loose’ participants!
AK: Luis, do you think that the 1st Solid Waste management in Developing countries conference can be conducted under the IWWG “umbrella”?
LD: Could be. I do not see a problem but we must check.
AK: We should determine a possible conference fee and this is highly related to organizational costs. Concerning accommodation, Romeela do you think we can book in the university campus?
RM: It is not actually a campus and the possible availability is very low (for e.g. 200 people).
SK: So we have to book hotel rooms for approximately 200 persons and a conference centre.
Sebastian Wolff (SW): Or a hotel with a conference centre would be the best.
RM: We should determine where we want the conference to take place. Most hotels are located north and west and the location of the conference is critical in order to determine delegates’ transport. If the conference takes place in the university, it would be difficult in terms of transport. Also there is a conference centre near the capital city but I do not yet know how easy it would be.
AK: This is one of the reasons that I am thinking of early-going to Mauritius on January 2010, as CODWAP project coordinator, i.e. to check the potentials and conclude to a decision regarding the accommodation and the conference location. Other important reasons include meeting local stakeholders and trying to raise more support and invoke more interest to the PGP and the conference. We will earlier ask the PMU’s permission on this additional trip of course.
SK: We may consider working on the draft conference brochure we have already prepared. What will the registration include?
RM: I think it should include coffee breaks and the conference proceedings. Regarding accommodation, bed and breakfast is the best. And also we should consider having a special price registration for locals.
SK: Do the local hotels have a shuttle bus for the basic transport from airport to hotel?
RM: Yes they do.
SK: We can also cooperate with a travel agency who frequently organise conferences.
ALL: Yes
RM: What will the conference duration be?
LD: I believe 3 days are good; 2 days conference and 1 day training.
AK: So the conference tentative schedule will be:
Monday, 06* September 2011 / Training sessionsTuesday, 07* September 2011 / Conference sessions
Wednesday, 08* September 2011 / Conference sessions
* Dates are indicative and not the final ones
Furthermore, we can have the CODWAP summit project meeting on Thursday and Friday. How do we announce / promote / disseminate the conference?
SK: During the kickoff meeting, we have determined several dates which we can check and update if necessary.
AK: We should prepare mailing lists and sent an electronic conference brochure which will include the dates of the conference and also the deadlines for abstract and paper submission.
ALL: Yes.
(Partners discussed, determined and agreed on the important dates regarding the conference and all project meetings/events- See Annex V).
AK: If you allow me to summarize, we have decided on the dates and we may have by December some indicative hotel accommodation prices as well as initial contacts with travel agencies. Afterwards, if and when I will be in Mauritius, Romeela and me can identify the most appropriate ones.
ALL: Yes.
15:30- 16:00 / Project webpage and other issuesSW: You have all received the link of the project webpage via email. We are still missing some important details such as the description by all partners and their communication data. We can also include the electronic version of the conference brochure in the webpage and be available to everyone.
SK: Please all check the webpage and provide Sebastian with what he needs to finalise it and finally put it on-line.
(Partners were able to check the project webpage as it currently looks in an off-line status).
SK: Last but not least, I should remind you of the CODWAP 1st annual report (narrative and financial) We are expected to submit this report by 20 January 2010 so may I kindly request you to submit all necessary documents and details by January 7th to us?
RM: The University will be closed at that time due to Christmas vacation.
SK: You will all receive an email by December 10th with all necessary documents for the report and I think you will have enough time to prepare them.
AK: Thank you all for being here in this informal meeting. I think it was very fruitful and we ended up to useful conclusions regarding the necessary preparatory steps towards the activities implementation. So we will see each other again in Bremen, Germany, where the 2nd regular meeting will take place on 4-7 May 2010.