São Paulo – Fortaleza, the capital city of Ceará state, should host a global debate on the climate and the semiarid between the 16th and 20th of August this year. The meeting, called the 2nd International Conference on Climate, Sustainability and Development in Semiarid Regions (Icid 2010), should involve 94 countries, among them Brazil and the Arab nations. Most of the Arab countries have arid climates and Brazil has ten states where the climate is semiarid.
According to Roberto Germano Costa, director at the National Semiarid Institute (INSA), an organisation under the Ministry of Science and Technology, in April or May there should be, in the city of Campina Grande, in the state of Paraíba, a preparatory meeting for the Icid 2010, with Arabs and South Americans, in the scope of the Summit of South American-Arab Countries (Aspa). The Arab nations, like the South American ones, should be invited to the meeting, articulated by the Ministry of Environment, with the support of the Itamaraty.
Icid 2010 is also a conference for preparation of the Rio+20, a great discussion on the climate to take place in Rio de Janeiro in 2012, twenty years after the Eco 1992. The meeting in Fortaleza has three United Nations conferences behind it, Climate Change, Biodiversity and Desertification. According to Costa, from the INSA, the Icid 2010 objective is to guide the formulation of public policies for the semiarid regions of the world.
During the meeting, INSA should promote roundtables with institutes that work in a similar way to it, concerned with arid and semiarid areas in other countries, proposing the formation of a global network. The conference as a whole is still being formulated and there should be several preparatory events. In total, it should include 32 international panels, 80 talks and eight dialogue panels.
Icid 2010 should bring together representatives of governments, the civil society and scholars. The promotion of the meeting is by the Centre for Management and Technical Studies at the Ministry of Science and Technology, but several organisations and governments are involved, among them the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) , the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the Institute of Applied Economic Research (Ipea) and the INSA.
Icid 2010
From August 16th to 20th
At Ceará Convention Centre, in Fortaleza
Telephone: (+55 61) 3424 9634
E-mail: contact@icid18.org
Further information: www.icid18.org
*Translated by Mark Ament
