International speakers from eight countries will address aspects of climate and environmental changes in Central Asia during a workshop sponsored by Grand Valley State Universitys Department of Geography and Planning.
The First International Workshop on Human Dimensions of Climate and Environmental Change in Central Asia is scheduled for May 21-22 in the DeVos Center, 401 W. Fulton St. in Grand Rapids. (Media coverage is welcome.)
More than 20 presenters from Uzbekistan, Russia, Turkey, Canada, France, Germany, Israel and the United States are expected. Fridays sessions will run from 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; Saturdays sessions will run from 9-11:15 a.m. All sessions will be held in room 136E DeVos Center.
Elena Lioubimtseva, Grand Valley assistant professor of geography and planning, has researched this region and said the Aral Sea (located in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan) is an "environmental disaster" of the global scale because of unprecedented desertification, which resulted from agricultural and water-use policies of surrounding countries.
She also said that these northern Eurasia countries are at high risk for political conflict caused by conflicting water-use policies of the neighboring independent states inherited from the Soviet era.
The keynote presentations, scheduled for 9:25 a.m. and 10:15 a.m. on Friday, are on the present and future of the Aral Sea basin. It will be given by Philip Micklin, professor emeritus of geography at Western Michigan University, and German Kust, vice director of the Soil Research Institute at Moscow State University.
For information about the workshop, contact Lioubimtseva at 616-331-2874 or [email protected]. Details are posted online at www.gvsu.edu/geography, click on "events."
