IESS hosted the first general meeting to mark the beginning of the Coastal Community Resilience to Climate and Diarrhoea (C2R-CD) project. The C2R-CD is a five-year transdisciplinary research aimed at generating knowledge in support of resilience building to climate change and improved diarrhoeal management in coastal communities. Dr. Dzidzo Yirenya-Tawiah who is the Principal Investigator (PI) and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute led the discussions.
In presenting the project overview, she explained the reason behind the focus on coastal communities emphasizing the multiple influences of climate change on environmental and epidemiological dynamics particularly in coastal areas. Details of the research delivery, management structure and the associated capacity building activities targeted at researchers, students (Masters and PhDs) and community members were presented. The leads of each of the five (5) C2R-CD project work packages, presented highlights of their assigned tasks and the expected deliverables.
|
Work Package
|
Main Objective
|
|
WP 1: Climate Related and Biophysical Studies
|
Generate climate related biophysical information
|
|
WP 2: Public Health and Transmission Pathways
|
Assess the epidemiological, environmental drivers and transmission pathways issues of the project
|
|
WP 3: Community and Institutional Dynamics
|
Explore the socio-cultural and economic factors and community level institutional arrangements in disaster risk management and diarrhoea prevention and management
|
|
WP 4: Integrated Assessment and Scenario Building
|
Collate data generated from WPs 1-3 and model scenarios to inform disease management
|
|
WP 5: Community Involvement, Mobilization and Education for Impact
|
Integrate community participation into the research process and implementation of innovative strategies that will be informed by the various WPs, particularly WP4
|
There was an open discussion on the project implementation, financial arrangements, capacity building, stakeholder engagement and dissemination activities as well as timelines for management team, work package lead and general meetings.
Present at the meeting included team members and partners from the Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Studies (C3SS), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), People’s Dialogue on Human Settlements (PD), Office Research, Innovation and Development (ORID), Schools of Nuclear and Allied Sciences, Public Health, Departments of Animal and Conservation Sciences (DABCS), Marine and Fisheries Sciences, Sociology and Physics.
Grants for the C2R-CD project is provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark (MFA) as part of Denmark’s international development cooperation with the Institute for Environment and Sanitation Studies (IESS) as the lead implementer. For more details on the C2R-CD project, click here