Mark it in your calendars: The upcoming online conference CLIMATE 2011 will feature "Climate Change + disaster risk management"! See more on www.climate2011.net.

This year we again issue the “Best Paper Award” in collaboration with Emerald Publishers. Please vote for your favorite authors and chose your favorite papers from the four categories.

Win 1 of 10 free books on „Universities and Climate Change". E-mail to Johanna: (a) Header “CLIMATE 2010 Book Lottery”, (b) conference user name, (c) full postal address. Winners are informed by e-mail. Good luck!

Did you know? A special features of this year’s conference is the conference section CC at your fingertips which offers free learning material for lecturers and teachers. Climate change games provide a playful way of getting involved with the key conference themes and a CO₂ calculator allows conference participants to assess their own CO₂ footprint.

Take a look behind the scenes before the official conference start on 1 November.

Listen to ICIMOD’s Dr Arun B. Shrestha’s 20 minute lecture on Climate Change and its Impacts on Cryosphere and Water Resources of the Hindu Kush Himalayan Region - see menu Conference/Partner Podcasts or click here.

In the run up of COP 16 in Cancún/Mexico, CLIMATE 2010 features a new video podcast in which the Parliamentary State Secretary Katherina Reiche, Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety in Germany, encourages the worldwide participants to seize the innovative online-climate conference for networking, discussing newest findings in climate research and for developing sustainable solutions.

Dr Norbert Roettgen, Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety of the Federal Republic of Germany, is the patron of the upcoming online climate conference CLIMATE 2010. Read more about the minister and his ministry's International Climate Initiative on the patronage or read the full press release.

All webpages of CLIMATE 2010 are hosted CO₂-neutral by the CLIMATE 2010 partner STRATO.

CO₂ emissions related to the use of participants´ personal computers during the online climate conference from 1-7 November 2010 will be compensated by our conference partner KlimaInvest. To guarantee a climate-neutral conference week, a wind energy park in Turkey is being financed according to the acknowleged WWF Gold Standard.

Rationale

Climate change is and will continue to be one of the central issues in the world´s agenda. The 15^th Conference of Parties (COP 15) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change held in Copenhagen in December 2009 has reiterated how much still needs to be done in order to tackle the various challenges climate change and its various ramifications pose to mankind.

In order to allow broader, interdisciplinary and inclusive discussions on matters related to climate change, the Research and Training Centre “Applications of Life Sciences” at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences pioneered a series of on-line research conferences on climate change. The world´s first on-line scientific conference on climate change, entitled CLIMATE 2008 / KLIMA 2008, was held from 3-7 November 2008. The second conference, titled CLIMATE 2009 / KLIMA 2009, was held on 2-6 November 2009. Both events have a unique feature: these conferences allowed hundreds of thousands of people across the globe to debate climate issues on-line, without causing additional and unnecessary CO₂sub> emissions.

The experiences from the pilot conference CLIMATE 2008 / KLIMA 2008 and its successor CLIMATE 2009 / KLIMA 2009 have shown that on-line research conferences – given they are organized in a climate-friendly or even climate-neutral manner – do generate much interest. Indeed, these kinds of events meet a growing demand for on-line conferences which cater for the broad participation of people from different sectors and backgrounds and, at the same time, aim to foster greater awareness on climate change. The on-line research conferences on climate change are by no means intended to replace normal events where people meet face to face. Instead, they can complement conventional conferences in an innovative way. On-line conferences allow people to access comprehensive information from everywhere, be it at school or university, the workplace or at home. 24 hours a day participants of these unique online events are able to access the pool of knowledge in a user-friendly way and free of charge, helping to overcome the challenges and costs associated with travel, hence allowing participation by a broad range of target groups.

The two previously organized and highly successful events, CLIMATE 2008 / KLIMA 2008 and CLIMATE 2009 / KLIMA 2009, suggest a perceived need to continue fostering the international debate on climate issues. For this reason, CLIMATE 2010 / KLIMA 2010 will be organized from 1 to 7 November 2010, focusing on "Climate Change and the Sustainable Management of Water Resources". There are two key arguments for the choice of this particular topic:

First, it is widely believed that climate change has a serious impact on global water supplies and may worsen water scarcity – a problem which threatens a large part of the world already today. Under present conditions, approximately 1.2 billion people – especially in developing countries - have no access to drinking water. In order to address this problem, the United Nations has set the goal of increasing access to a further 600 million people by 2015, i.e. better access to drinking water for around 100 million people per year between 2010 and 2015.
Secondly, there is a pressing need to use the presently available water resources which are very scarce in some areas more sustainably. Even though in parts of Africa, Latin America and the Middle East water resources are already scarce, the proportion of water wasted partly to leaks but also due to the lack of adequate systems to retain, recycle and reuse water is considerably high. Urgent action is needed to address this issue to keep up with UN targets.

The thematic focus of CLIMATE 2010 / KLIMA 2010 will thus allow in-depth discussions and support the search for global and regional solutions for the impacts climate change have on water supplies and will address the need to promote sustainable water use across the world.

The event will have two tracks: one in English and one in the German language. Over the course of the event, interested participants can read the papers, exchange ideas with the authors and participant experts and browse through further background information on specific aspects of climate change.