Feb. 6, 2014

The Water Institute at UNC, housed in the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health, will host the NEXUS 2014: Water, Food, Climate and Energy Conference, to be held March 5-8 at the William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education in Chapel Hill, N.C.

The conference will bring together scientists, practitioners and stakeholders in government, civil society and business to focus on the nexus approach, i.e., the interconnectedness of all of the resources needed to meet the demands of an interlinked and growing global population.

Climate, energy, water and food are resources that impact everyone globally, and the demand on these resources will only increase. Water issues will be at the crux of discussions on the world’s growing need for food and energy over the next few decades in order to ensure sustainability, security and development.

The conference offers a forum for discussions on innovative and sustainable solutions to the world’s growing demand for energy, food and water. The global network of academics and practitioners who attend will launch a response to the Millennium Development Goals, now being negotiated at the United Nations.

Dr. Jamie Bartram

Dr. Jamie Bartram

Co-directors of the conference are Jamie Bartram, PhD, Don and Jennifer Holzworth Distinguished Professor of environmental sciences and engineering at the Gillings School and director of The Water Institute, and Felix Dodds, associate fellow at the Tellus Institute and a UNC Global Research Institute fellow.

Since its inception in 2010, The Water Institute at UNC has hosted an annual Water and Health Conference in the fall. This year, the focus will be expanded to serve other parts of the water community through two new conferences—this one, focused on the water-food-climate-energy nexus, and one focused on water microbiology, to be held May 5-9.

“Water is one of the greatest development opportunities of our time, impacting health, agriculture, energy, security, the environment and the economy,” Bartram said. “Global trends such as population growth and rising living standards are increasing the demand on water, as well as other natural resources, like land and energy. We developed the Nexus Conference to bring together individuals and institutions from diverse sectors to enable them to collaborate to address issues at the intersections of water, climate, food and energy.”

Conference partners include the UNC Institute for the Environment, the Millennium Institute, BioVision, the Stockholm Environment Institute, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the United Nations Development Program, the World Bank, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the World Wildlife Federation, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, the International Renewable Energy Association, the Global Compact, the World Society for the Protection of Animals and the Global Water Partnership.

The agenda and registration materials for the event are available online

Registration is required. The cost of the conference ranges from $125 for students attending a single day to $475 for non-students attending the entire conference.


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Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: David Pesci, director of communications, (919) 962-2600 or dpesci@unc.edu.

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