Suchergebnisse

"This book focuses on governance and management issues in the much publicized 'Ganga Rejuvenation Project', led by the Indian Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi. Attempts over the past three decades to clean up and rejuvenate one of the world's greatest rivers have proved futile. The major reasons for the lack of success are absence of long-term planning, poor co-ordination and failure to sustain whatever little infrastructure for water and sewage treatment could be developed. Focusing on these broad aspects, the book explores spaces for better governance through active community participation, knowledge management, prospects of Public-Private-Partnership, e-governance, youth education, waterfront development, lessons from past failures, comparative international analogies, utilization of external aid and global expertise in successful implementation of a sustainable long-term plan for a river basin's integrated development of both the economy and environment. A host of activities, such as, improving pollution monitoring systems, new development plans for tourism enhancement; river dredging and sewering riparian cities are already being carried in the hope of quick results. The Government of India has also appointed a task force for preparation of a long-term strategy. However, substantial knowledge gaps persist especially with regard to governance. This book aims to address the governance and policy issues and will be a very timely contribution to cleaning as well as rejuvenating Ganga, a river that is lifeline of millions of people."--

The value of historic observational weather data for reconstructing long-term climate patterns and the detailed analysis of extreme weather events has long been recognized (Le Roy Ladurie, 1972; Lamb, 1977). In some regions however, observational data has not been kept regularly over time, or its preservation and archiving has not been considered a priority by governmental agencies. This has been a particular problem in Southeast Asia where there has been no systematic country-by-country method of keeping or preserving such data, the keeping of data only reaches back a few decades, or where instability has threatened the survival of historic records. As a result, past observational data are fragmentary, scattered, or even absent altogether. The further we go back in time, the more obvious the gaps. Observational data can be complimented however by historical documentary or proxy records of extreme events such as floods, droughts and other climatic anomalies. This review article highlights recent initiatives in sourcing, recovering, and preserving historical weather data and the potential for integrating the same with proxy (and other) records. In so doing, it focuses on regional initiatives for data research and recovery – particularly the work of the international Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth's (ACRE) Southeast Asian regional arm (ACRE SEA) – and the latter's role in bringing together disparate, but interrelated, projects working within this region. The overarching goal of the ACRE SEA initiative is to connect regional efforts and to build capacity within Southeast Asian institutions, agencies and National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHS) to improve and extend historical instrumental, documentary and proxy databases of Southeast Asian hydroclimate, in order to contribute to the generation of high-quality, high-resolution historical hydroclimatic reconstructions (reanalyses) and, to build linkages with humanities researchers working on issues in environmental and climatic history in the region. Thus, this article also highlights the inherent value of multi/cross/inter-disciplinary projects in providing better syntheses and understanding of human and environmental/climatic variability and change.