World Water Day: online and interactive
22 March 2010
Venue: Online
World Water Day 2010 (22 March) communicates messages on water quality, ecosystems and human well-being.
To mark 2010 World Water Day the UK National Commission for UNESCO Scotland Committee is supporting a Scottish Hydrology for the Environment, Life and Policy (HELP) Online Pilot Project: Interactive Ning Gathering at the UNESCO Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science (University of Dundee).
This online event will showcase UNESCO HELP river basins in Scotland. This innovative event will be a collective gathering of knowledge, expertise and opinion from amongst HELP stakeholders primarily in Scotland, but also globally.
The University of Dundee will lead on discussions with respect to the Tweed; and the Macaulay Institute will provide comparisons regarding the Dee. There will also be an international comparison of the Tweed and Thames HELP river basins, led by the University of Dundee HELP Centre. The focus throughout will be HELP and the interface between land use and water management, and how we crystallise a stakeholder driven agenda for effective river basin management in Scotland.
Everyone attending the event, online or face-to-face, will be the beneficiaries of the project. These people will be practitioners and stakeholders in the public and voluntary sectors, primarily, both within the Tweed and Dee river basins and further afield- often distributed across many small towns and smaller settlements in often remote parts of the country.
Taking part
The event will be online and free to access. The video stream to be used will be “U Stream” and “Cover it Live” software will be used to provide a transcript in real time for people logging on to the event, which requires no special software at the user’s end (just a web browser, a sound card and broadband internet).
Materials will be prepared in advance of the event to ensure that the transcript provision can keep up with the speaker’s delivery. There will be a simultaneous live Twitter stream so that participants can feed their comments and/or questions directly to the speaker and the organisers, and also so that they can share comments with each other.
To attend the event in Dundee, please email Daniel Gilbert at d.gilbert[at]dundee.ac.uk. If you plan to participate in the event online, please RSVP on the event page. We plan to stream the event video live to the web, and to provide an interactive "live blog" throughout the afternoon.
Agenda
The Policy Context
13:00 – 13:20: Chris Spray, UNESCO Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science at the University of Dundee, giving policy context, purpose and parameters for the day.
13:20 – 13:40: UNESCO Headquarters speaker, global UNESCO HELP perspective. To be confirmed.
13:40 – 14:00: Andrew Panter, Scottish Natural Heritage on Valuing the Natural Environment.
The River Basins
14:00 – 14:20: Susan Cooksley, Macaulay Institute, on the Dee HELP basin.
14:20 – 14:40: Simon Langan, Macaulay Institute, on stakeholder engagement within the Dee basin; final confirmation required.
14:40 – 15:00: Nicola Bissett, Tweed Forum, on the Tweed HELP basin
15:00 – 15:20: Tom Ball, UNESCO Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science at the University of Dundee, comparing Tweed HELP basin with that of the Thames and beyond.
Focus on Water Quality and Flooding
15:20 – 15:40: Martin Marsden, SEPA, on water quality & regulation.
15:40 – 16:00: Lisa Webb, Land Use Policy Officer (Water) RSPB Scotland, on water quality and birdlife.
16:00 – 16:20: David Green, Scottish Borders Council, on flooding.
16:20 – 16:30: Chris Spray, UNESCO Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science at the University of Dundee, wrap-up.
