As I mentioned in my Embassy Bulletin in January, the British Embassy Budapest and the Central European University (CEU) jointly organised a series of four seminars entitled "The Global Economic Crisis: Challenges and Opportunities for Europe".

The seminars have focused on the major challenges and opportunities arising from the global resource crunch, including the issues of low-carbon high-growth economy, energy prices, climate security, food and water security, international development co-operation, and international institutional reform.

The aim has been to raise the profile of these issues locally and regionally and produce useful ideas that could translate into policy planning. The media partner of the events has been the well-known journal Figyelő.

The last seminar of this particular series will be held on 5 June devoted to the very up-to-date topic of the reform of international institutions and global governance reflecting today’s economic realities. HM Ambassador Greg Dorey will deliver a welcome speech, as he did in the previous seminars. Keynote speakers are Anwar Choudhury (Director, International Institutions, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office); Gabriella Szűcs (Deputy Head of Department of International Development Cooperation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Iain Begg (Professor, London School of Economics), and Nick Sitter (Head of Department of Public Policy, CEU).

The success of the previous seminars was guaranteed by excellent speakers from government authorities, academia, and NGOs. Keynote speakers and panel members included Sir Andrew Cahn (Chief Executive, UK Trade and Investment), Gordon Bajnai (at that time Economy Minister, now Prime Minister of Hungary), Julius Horvath (Head of Economics Department, CEU), Gregor Irwin (Chief Economist, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office), Tim Abraham (Director, European Policy, UK Department of Energy and Climate Change), Péter Gordos (State Secretary, Ministry of Transport, Telecommunications and Energy), Diana Ürge-Vorsatz (Nobel Laureate, Head of Environmental Sciences and Policy PhD Programme, CEU), József Fucskó (Director of Research, Hungarian Environmental Economics Centre), Randolph Kent (Director, Humanitarian Futures Programme, King`s College), Maria Kadlecikova (Assistant Director General and Regional Representative, FAO), Ruben Mnatsakanian (Head of Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy), and József Popp (Director, Research Institute for Agricultural Economics). Howard Robinson (Academic Pro-Rector, CEU) and Liviu Matei (CEO, CEU) kindly chaired the events. The seminars have had a good mix of audience, including policy makers, academics, think-tanks, opinion formers, businesses, and NGOs.

The third of the seminars (30 April) was devoted to the issue of food and water security in the international development cooperation context, and included the issue of water shortage as well. Incidentally, 17 June is not only the date of the official worldwide celebrations of Her Majesty The Queen’s Birthday, but it is the World Day to Combat Desertification, based on the UN General Assembly’s decision of 1995. As Hungary’s former National Focal Point to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), I should mention that there are quite many misconceptions about the term desertification. Defining it in a simple way, desertification is a land degradation process which leads to decreased biological potential of land and deterioration of ecosystems on the land, resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities.

According to the UNCCD (1994), desertification may occur in drylands, i.e. arid, semi-arid and dry-subhumid areas of the world. But it is argued in the frame of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA 1995) that the concept of drylands involves hyper-arid areas (deserts) as well. The reason is that desertification affects all continents (incl. deserts and desert-margins), except Antarctica, where water scarcity limits ecosystem provisioning services. Drylands (including hyper-arid areas) comprise 41.3% of the global terrestrial area and are home to 34.7% of the global population in the year 2000 (MA 2005).

Every year, the World Day to Combat Desertification is devoted to a specific theme. This year the focus is on "Conserving land and water = Securing our common future". This is a particularly relevant topic as desertification is not only a partly human-induced phenomenon, but also it has a wide range of serious impacts on human life. Food, agriculture, and water security, economic and social aspects, international migration, border security, and crises and conflicts are among those areas. In this respect, desertification can be regarded as a challenge to human security. Quoting former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, "drought and desertification threaten the livelihood of over 1 billion people in more than 110 countries around the world". Developing countries are among the most vulnerable ones, and therefore international development cooperation has a role of cornerstone importance in helping these countries to design and implement successful adaptation strategies and policies.

Based on the success of the previous seminars, the British Embassy and the CEU intend to organise further seminars in the autumn this year.

• Dora Kulauzov
  Economic Attaché
  3 June 2009