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Last modified 16 March 2006
Workshop 6-9 March 2006
The workshop took place in Bangkok, Thailand, on 6 through 9 March 2006.
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Informal reception onSunday evening preceding the meeting |
This activity was a follow-up to the recent successful APN/WMO Public Forum on "Climate Calamities and Human Health" at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction, held 22 January 2005 in Kobe, Japan. It was suggested, based on comments and remarks at the session, that seasonality and climate change on different time scales (such as multi-year and decades) has been relatively neglected for research and for educating the public and policymakers. Climate and health issues are of major, and growing, concern to policy makers in many governments around the Pacific Rim and elsewhere. Through this workshop, educational materials are being developed for use in undergraduate courses.
Seasonality and climate change has not, as yet, become a focus of attention to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) activity. Seasonality, and changes to it on various time scales, has major implications for the use of water resources, food production, and public health management.
Four countries were originally chosen for the prototype workshop: Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand. Each of these countries has been actively involved in climate variability and climate change issues, and the organizers have had interactions with various researchers within each of them. There has been preliminary interest expressed by the University of Malaya (Kuala Lumpur) in climate affairs as a program. Participants were also selected from Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, Vietnam. Some universities in Bangkok also participated in the workshop. It is hoped that the universities and training centers that participated will continue the educational activities related to seasonality and climate change and variability, including health issues. In addition, participants from universities in India, China, and Sri Lanka actively participated.
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The meeting in session |
Educational materials on the topics of seasonality, climate variability, climate change, sustainable development, and the influence of changes in the flow of the seasons on human activities were compiled for use at the university undergraduate level.
A second phase of this activity will be to develop the concept for other universities and other countries in the region. The participants were encouraged to interact electronically and will assist in the development of course materials for use by others in the region.
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