The project seeks to promote capacity building for research, analysis and evaluation of the impacts of climate change and water, using the tools of environmental economics.
The Program on Governance and Socioeconomics of Environmental Goods and Services (GSEBSA) at CATIE, with financial support from the Climate Change and Water Program of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada, just launched a new project called “Strengthening the capacity building and research in environmental economics to study the links between water and climate change”. This project is a three year collaboration between LACEEP, EfD-CA, and the CEDE at the Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia.
This initiative seeks to promote capacity building for research, analysis, and evaluation of the impacts of climate change and water, using environmental economics principles and tools. This project is envisioned into three stages. The first stage focuses on identifying and defining a research agenda on extreme events and adaptation strategies in the management of water supply and services. As part of this first stage a workshop will be held between September 30 and October 1 in Panama City. It is expected to involve top-level researchers and public decision-makers working on water and climate change in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).
The work during this international event will revolve around establishing facts and projections about climate change and water in LAC to identify possible adaptation measures to extreme events such as precipitation, glaciers retraction, sea level rise, among others. In addition, there will be discussions on the socioeconomic dimension of climate change, with emphasis on adaptation measures.
The results of this workshop are the cornerstone of the next stages of the project. The development and design of methodological approaches to successfully address policy issues relevant to the topics identified during the workshop will be conducted during the second stage. This work will be the basis to define a research agenda for a public competition that will offer fellowships and grants for research in the identified priority areas and issues starting in 2012.
Finally, the research activities designed and consolidated in the second stage will be further developed using LACEEP’s platform for the recruitment of researchers in different places and countries of LAC. At this third stage heavy emphasis will be given to the aspect of communication and policy incidence so that the research results reach the relevant academic audience, policy-makers, and other stakeholders working on the links between water and climate change in priority regions.
For detailed information contact the project coordinators:
Juan Robalino (robalino@catie.ac.cr) and Roger Madrigal (rmadriga@catie.ac.cr) from GSEBSA and Jorge Maldonado (jmaldona@uniandes.edu.co) from CEDE.
LACEEP is the Latin American and Caribbean Environmental Economics Program.
EFD-CA Center is the Environment for Development initiative, and is an integral part of the thematic program on Governance and Socioeconomics of Environmental Goods and Services (GSEBSA) of the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE).
CEDE is the Center of Economic Development Studies at the University of Los Andes, Colombia.