News from the CEPA e-mail list

Join the Wetlands and Poverty Discussion Forum (29/03/07)

Good afternoon everyone:

Here's a message from Sanjiv de Silva, Programme Officer at IWMI (International Water Management Institute) on an up-coming wetlands and poverty discussion forum.

With best wishes, Sandra Hails, Ramsar Secretariat
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As part of a study IWMI is conducting for Wetlands International (WI) on Lessons in linking wetlands conservation with poverty reduction, we will be holding an e-forum on the subject from 2-18 April.

The document below provides the background.

Whilst appreciating the time constraints that many of you must face, we hope you will see this as an opportunity to share the knowledge gained from your own experiences with the broader conservation and development communities.

Your contributions will be combined with several case studies we are conducting on the same subject, and synthesized into a report to highlight emerging lessons and perspectives on wetland conservation and poverty reduction. This will then be used by WI to develop shorter communication products targeted at specific groups, ranging from donors to grass-roots conservation and development organisations and practitioners.

Could you also please forward this email and invitation to as many contacts as possible who work on wetlands, Protected Areas, poverty reduction/development.

As stated in the attached invitation, people wishing to participate should email Ms. Nadia Manning at IWMI who will be moderating the Forum. Her email is provided.

With thanks,

Sanjiv de Silva
Programme Officer, IWMI

Join the Wetlands and Poverty Discussion Forum

The IWMI Wetlands group invites YOU ALL to join an interactive, online discussion on Wetlands and Poverty. IWMI has developed and will facilitate this forum to capture the contributions of people (all of YOU) working in different aspects of poverty and wetlands.

This Discussion Forum will focus on conservation and development with regards to wetlands (using Ramsar definition). We will be discussing the need for a more cohesive approach to addressing the conservation-development nexus and whether/ how to enhance the recognition of a people-ecosystem interconnection in trying to achieve both poverty reduction and wetlands conservation.

This discussion forms part of a larger project (part of Wetlands International’s Wetlands and Poverty Reduction Project) aimed at identifying existing lessons and best practices in creating mutually supportive links between human well-being and wetlands management.

The Forum will run from April 2nd until April 18th, using an email-based and internet site approach known as DGroup (for more information please see http://www.dgroups.org/), which will allow you all to participate and share in interesting and useful discussions and knowledge sharing on the topic.

This forum will include opportunities for sharing documents, engaging in discussions, filling out strategic surveys, contributing stories and experiences, and other features. This forum will be moderated to ensure it is iterative and wide reaching. Various discussions and activities will be posted over the ‘work’ days (Mon-Fri) during this time period for people to participate in. These include:

Introductions and understanding each other’s backgrounds and point of view
Discussion on poverty reduction tools/approaches
Discussion on conservation of wetlands
Exploring conflict resolution
Most Significant Change- story sharing exercise
Guiding the future: Providing recommendations for future work
Overview and review

You can participate in as much or little as you would like, in whichever components you are interested in, and whenever you can during the time period. You can take part in discussions extensively or with simple responses, post documents in the Resources section, or add important links

To sign-up for the Wetlands and Poverty Discussion forum- send an email to n.manning@cgiar.org with:

-Your name
-Your email address
-Your institution

Some things to note:
1. Once you sign-up for the Forum, your name and email will be added to the DGroup and an invitation email will be sent to you with your username and password and link to the site

2. You can post messages directly onto the site, send emails to the group, or even reply to emails.
3. You can unsubscribe from the DGroup at ANY time
4. You can send private replies or contributions to the facilitator via email.

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Sandra Hails, CEPA Programme Officer
Ramsar Convention Secretariat
Rue Mauverney 28, CH-1196 Gland, Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 999 0176; Fax: +41 22 999 0169
E-mail: hails@ramsar.org
Web Site: http://ramsar.org
CEPA mini-Web site: http://ramsar.org/outreach_index.htm

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