Indochina Global Change Network

Secretariat Office
279/24, Giang Vo St, Hanoi, Vietnam
Tel/fax: +84-4-38515213   E-mail: nguyenhuuninh1954@gmail.com

The goal of the Indochina Global Change Network (IGCN) is to strengthen the scientific capacity of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam and hence the ability of these nations to respond to the threat posed by global environmental change and related hazards. Network activities include policy-relevant information provision, training and research on global change issues.

The Network has three main aims:

• to foster and provide support for focused capacity-strengthening projects, directed at specific regional needs;
• to provide training in global change studies through workshops, studentships and fellowships and to promote the development of relevant educational materials for the scientific community, policy makers and the general public; and,
• to foster and, where appropriate, coordinate regional research on global environmental change, providing high-level expertise in support of policy development.

The Network is pledged to interdisciplinary research and, in particular, the fusion of biophysical and socio-economic methods.

The Network is also committed to a long-term perspective since the problems of global change have characteristic timescales of decades to centuries.

The Network recognizes that an effective precautionary response to long-term environmental change must be based on action to reduce present-day vulnerability and that this is, in many cases, a more immediate development priority.

Finally, the Network is dedicated to the ideal of sustainable development, meeting present-day needs while ensuring environmental security across both space and time, through the fostering and coordination of regional activities on global environmental change and related hazards.

Past Network activities have been supported by the Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research (WOTRO), the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN), the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

The IGCN meeting The Impact of El Niño and La Niña on Southeast Asia was held in February 2000. As a result of the recommendations of this meeting, training workshops on responding to El Niño and La Niña have been held in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2002 and Vientiane, Lao PDR, in 2004.

The final report from the IGCN workshop Forecasting El Niño and La Niña in Indochina held in Hanoi, Vietnam, in January 2002 is available.

Presentations and related material and the final report from the IGCN workshop Seasonal Climate Monitoring for Indochina held in Vientiane, Lao PDR, in July 2004 are available.