hello from marlen

Hello,
I am marlen from Germany (living in italy now). I was applying for this group, but for some unclear reasons I am in the first group now. Now I saw that your project will be related to rainwater management and I am very courious to hear something more from you, cause when i wrote my thesis for landscape-architecture last semester this was my topic too. I would like to know what you are going to do concretly and hope I can also get connections to this group.

Please tell me more and see you in torino!
regards from perugia
marlen

Dear Marlen,
I did tell all group 1 participants, in my first mail to you, that group distribution was carried out after minute scrutiny of your applications by a panel of international experts and on the basis of balance between countries and gender. If you happen to be in Group 1, it is out of objective reasons.
Anyway, I assure you that the 3 groups will enjoy parting at times, and being together at other times during the Forum, just as the experts experience and will be experiencing the same.
See you.

Hello, I am Dahlia Mansour from Lebanon. I am agriculture engineer and I have worked recently on sustainable development of water resources in Lebanon. I hope this forum will give us the opportunity to interact and to exchance experiences.

Best regards,
Dahlia

Hi all !

I'm Gary, from Paris.
I'd like to say a few words on my research on Finance and Sustainable developement.

◘ Traditionally, when it comes to assess the risk of a particular project or investment in a country, economic and financial variables are principally taken into account. My research does not pretend going against this economic trend, but rather aims to add, beside economic indicators, what has been coined as “extra-financial” variables.

◘ What is considered being “extra-financial” variables revolve around three main categories: governance (including criteria related to corruption, political stability, ratification of human rights conventions, liberty of the press, etc), social development (access to basic needs, unemployment, poverty, inequality, education, health, etc.) and environmental protection (emissions of CO2, greenhouse gaze, protection of biodiversity, change in forest area, water resource, pollution, etc.) Altogether, my research focuses on 107 countries, analysed though nearly 40 indicators.

◘ I tend to demonstrate that a country which follows sustainable principles is in a better position to face the future. Such a state becomes then a high-quality place to invest, according to the new set of criteria listed above. Indeed, a country that adopts a sustainable development is expected to become more stable and less risky in the long run.

◘ The financial milieu is reluctant to integrate social and environmental dimensions into their daily work. They need to be convinced that risk is global and not only financial. The main challenge is to build new arguments and concepts asserting that extra–financial indicators need to be taken into account. This new conceptualisation must adopt a pluridisciplinary approach, including social sciences (geography, sociology, geopolitics, etc.) and environmental sciences.

◘ I am currently developing a practical tool for country risk assessment with the technical help and expertise of EthiFinance, an independent extra-financial research agency .

SEE you in TURIN !!

Gary

I like what you are doing, Gary. I'd be interested to find out more about your very up-to-date research. I'm an environmentalist who gave a course on sustainable development (evolution of the concept and its social dimension) and later on Environmental Education to would-be journalistes and child-educators at university in Tunis.
See you in Torino.
Ameur J. (Group 1 moderator).