|
News From the D.C. Office: |
LBNL brought technical training to four continents this summer with a series of regional greenhouse gas mitigation workshops. As part of LBNL's continued work on the U.S. Country Studies Program (USCSP), staff members of the Energy Analysis Program from Washington, D.C. and Berkeley worked together to put on workshops in Warsaw, Poland; Cancun, Mexico; Arusha, Tanzania; and Seoul, Korea.
LBNL began working with USCSP more than a year and a half ago, when it was awarded the contract to provide mitigation assistance to some 35 countries. The Program grew out of the U.S.'s commitment to help developing and transitional countries address climate-change issues‹ specifically to examine how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The USCSP's work is organized according to guidelines established in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), which was created as a result of the 1992 "Earth Summit" in Rio de Janeiro. An interagency management team brought together by the White House oversees the program. The Country Studies goal is to provide assistance in four areas: emission inventories, vulnerability and adaptation assessments, mitigation assessments, and assistance in forming and evaluating strategies for mitigation and adaptation.
In the past, LBNL provided technical mitigation assistance to countries individually and twice assembled research team members in Berkeley for training. This summer's workshops brought participants together to compare and discuss regional results and issues. Each workshop program consisted of three to four days of presentation and discussion in energy and nonenergy groups.
The first workshop, held June 13-16 in Warsaw, set the tone for those that followed. Co-sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), it brought together more than 90 scientific and policy experts from 23 East European countries. The workshop provided a forum for discussing the methodology and some preliminary results of the participants' own mitigation assessments. Papers presented there were published in a hardbound volume of proceedings.
The second workshop was held in Cancun, July 10-13 for Latin American countries. Co-sponsored by the Instituto Nacional de Ecologia (INE) and the Organizacion Latino Americana de Energia (OLADE), it brought together about 60 participants from 13 countries and also generated a book of proceedings. The African workshop was held August 28-30, and the Asian one September 25-28.
This series of four regional workshops marks the midpoint of LBNL's technical assistance. Once the technical assistance phase is complete, LBNL will publish a synthesis report, due in mid-1996. LBNL will also assist USCSP in the next phase, which will help countries use the results of their studies to prepare greenhouse gas mitigation plans and conduct technology assessments. Staff in Washington and Berkeley may again be called on to assist.
LBNL staff leading the four workshops were:
--Emma Kahn
Jeffrey Harris
Environmental Energy Technologies Division
1250 Maryland Ave. SW, Suite 150
(202) 484-0880
This work is supported by the U.S. Country Studies Management Team (a thirteen-agency task force of the U.S. government)