| NATURAL HERITAGE INSTITUTE |
|
| NHI Fall dispatch | October/November 2010 |
|
Thank You!
We wish to acknowledge and thank Susan MacCormac and her colleagues at Morrison and Foerster for providing exceptional pro bono legal counsel and non-profit policy guidance to NHI.
|
|
NHI Board Chairman Joins the Gates Foundation
We are pleased to announce that our Chairman, Frank Rijsberman, has been selected as the Director of the new Water, Sanitation and Hygiene initiative (WS&H) at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. With the WS&H initiative, which is a component of the Foundation's Global Development Program, Mr. Rijsberman will lead a program dedicated to reducing the burden of water-borne disease and improving access to sanitation, particularly in Africa and Asia, where the impact of limited services and poor infrastructure is highest (See Gates Foundation Press Release). He will assume his new position on Monday October 11. Previously, Dr. Rijsberman was a program director at Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google.com.
|
|
Yongxuan in Paris, 2010.
 |
Yongxuan Gao Joins NHI Staff
Miss Yongxuan Gao (Xuan) joined NHI in August 2010 as a Water Systems Engineer. She is nearing receipt of her PhD from Tufts University, Massachusetts. Xuan worked as an environmental engineer in Massachusetts, Hong Kong and Shanghai, China before pursuing her PhD. She has carried out research projects in Nepal and Ghana. Her primary expertise is in the area of water resource management with emphasis on environmental flows, hydrologic modeling, hydro-diplomacy and alleviation of poverty through better water resources management. Her current research program focuses upon the areas of environmental and water conflicts resolution. Xuan will play an important role in NHI's Mekong River Basin project.
|
 |
Project News:
African Water Facility Approves Funding for Akosombo Dam Reoperation Project in Ghana
NHI's Global Initiative to Reoptimize Major Dams achieved a milestone this month with the announcement that the African Water Facility, through the African Development Bank, will provide funding for the Akosombo Dam component in Ghana. The grant will support project activities carried out in collaboration with our Ghanaian partners, who will be led by the Water Resources Commission of the Ministry of Water Resources Works and Housing, and international organizations, such as the Purdue University Energy Centre. The goal of the Ghana component is to contribute to economic growth and poverty reduction through restoration of downstream ecosystems and livelihoods by reoperating the Akosombo and Kpong dams. It is one of a suite of regional reoperation investigations within NHI's Global Dam Reoptimization program to demonstrate a toolbox of techniques that can be widely applied to dams to make them more environmentally sustainable. The project component in Ghana will contribute learning on the efficacy of regional grid integration to enable rescheduling of the operations of major hydropower dams. It will also demonstrate the efficacy of utilizing floodplain storage in conjunction with reservoirs to reduce flood risks and restore aquatic habitats. Thus, this project has the dual objective of improving the environmental performance of the major infrastructure on the Lower Volta River and also of contributing to a global process of shared learning. Learn more at our project website: http://www.global-dam-re-operation.org/where-we-work/africa/ghana-lower-volta.html
|
Mekong River Basin is Focus of New NHI Initiative
The Mekong River Basin is a biodiversity hotspot that provides food and water for nearly 70 million people in six countries. It is a life-supporting system that affords fishing in both the river and estuary, flood recessional farming and livestock grazing in the floodplain, water for industrial and agricultural development, and transport. However, approximately 154 existing and planned dams on the Mekong/Lancang mainstem and its tributaries threaten the waters and ecosystems that provide these important benefits and services. NHI believes that if properly sited, designed and operated, the dams could help buffer the effects of climate change, preserve traditional food production and ecosystems downstream, and rehabilitate catchments upstream, without sacrificing power production. On the other hand, heedless decisions by the basin governments could have catastrophic effects in the Tongle Sap and Mekong Delta, which are sustained by sediment replenishment. Sediment starvation coupled with sea level rise could jeopardize food production in one-third of the delta, on which tens of millions of people depend for sustenance. Thus, building on concepts that NHI initiated in the Global Dam Reoptimization Initiative. NHI is teaming up with the Mekong River Commission, China's Institute for Water Resources and Hydropower Research, WWF-Greater Mekong Programme, TNC's Global Freshwater Program, Conservation International, and the local government water/environmental agencies in the Basin to help development proceed in a sustainable manner. Read more >>>
The Mekong River Delta. Photo: Olivier Cogels.
 | |
Board Member Profile - Daniel Peter Loucks
A key team member of the Akosombo dam reoperation project described above is Daniel P. Loucks, one of NHI's esteemed members of its Board of Trustees. Dr. Loucks is a professor at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University where he teaches and directs research in the application of economics, ecology, environmental engineering and systems analysis methods to find solutions to regional environmental and water resources problems. During periods of leave from Cornell he has worked as an economist at the World Bank, taught at other universities in the United States and abroad, and has been a consultant to governmental agencies and private firms dealing with development and resource management issues. Most recently, he was teaching at the Technical University of Vienna in Austria where he researched long-term investment planning under higher than usual levels of uncertainty for water supply and demand due to changes in population, land use and climate. |
|
|
|
The Natural Heritage Institute is a non-profit public interest and conservation advocacy organization founded in 1989 and based in San Francisco, California. We work in watersheds worldwide that have been significantly altered and where intact aquatic systems of exceptional ecological value are subject to eminent development pressure.
For more information about NHI and to sign-up for our mailing list, please visit our website: www.n-h-i.org or contact:
Chris Marhula Manager of Administration & Development
(415) 693-3000 ext. 119 |
|
|
|
|
|
