UNU Update

NEW

Birdlife of Brazil's Pantanal wetlands,
the world's greatest undivided flood plain

UNU moving ahead with plans
for wetlands research initiative
UN University is making progress with efforts to establish a new Regional Training Programme in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso to study integrated land management of fragile wetland ecosystems. The new institute will focus on the Pantanal, the world's greatest undivided flood plain – a patchwork of ecosystems incorporating lakes, lagoons, rivers, forest and islands covering about 160,000 square kilometres.

War, exploitation and pollution threaten
mountain ecosystems, says UNU expert
The degradation of mountain ecosystems – home to 600 million people and the source of water for more than half the world's population – threatens to seriously worsen global environmental problems including floods, landslides and famine, according to an analysis by United Nations University.

New UNU Programme
opens in Belgium
An interview with Luk Van Langenhove, director of the Bruges-based Comparative Regional Integration Studies programme, latest addition to the UNU network.

INWEH leads project to reduce
blue baby syndrome in Syria
A pilot project headed by UNU International Network on Water, Environment and Health (UNU/INWEH) is under way to help villages in Syria identify ways of reducing nitrate contamination of water supplies, a problem linked to life-threatening blue baby syndrome.

INCORE head appointed to
council of Carter Center
The Director of UNU Institute for Conflict Resolution (UNU/INCORE), Prof. Mari Fitzduff, has been appointed to the International Council of Conflict Resolution at the Carter Center, founded 20 years ago by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter to reduce conflict and alleviate suffering in the world.

New book analyzes negotiations that
lead to environmental agreements
Global environmental problems require an unprecedented degree of international cooperation, shaping a complicated negotiating process that is dissected and analyzed in a new book from UNU Press.

New on the Web

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

EU-UNU Global Forum discusses
Governance Across Borders
United Nations University (UNU) and the Delegation of the European Commission in Japan co-hosted the the second annual EU-UNU Tokyo Global Forum January 24-25. The topic of this year’s conference was Governance Across Borders: National, Regional and Global.

UNU submits report to Johannesburg
Summit Asian preparatory committee
A UN University report containing 10 key recommendations aimed at removing barriers to sustainable development in the Asia and the Pacific has been submitted to the region's Preparatory Committee for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, to be held in Johannesburg later this year.

UPCOMING

Conference to discuss technology
in the developing world
The fourth conference on Innovation, Learning and Technological Dynamism of Developing Countries will be held in Maastricht, the Netherlands, May 15.

INCORE Summer School
scheduled for June 10-15
UNU Institute for Conflict Resultion will hold its annual International Summer School from June 10-15 in Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

Calendar of events and meetings for 2002