Putting Water Research on the Global Scientific Agenda
In a number of interviews and keynote speeches, IIASA Director and Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Pavel Kabat, called for a long-term system approach to water research, new partnerships with the developing world and a change in donor practices, to tackle water-climate issues.
In a prominent interview with the journal Nature Climate Change entitled "Water at the Crossroads," Dr. Kabat, a climate and water expert, expressed the view that the future of water resources needs to be viewed as a cross-cutting system issue rather than a sectoral issue, as has been the case in the past. The new research being carried out at IIASA would do what no other research had done to date, namely to integrate the different water uses—food, energy, industry, domestic, and environmental—to provide insights about how to prioritize competing needs and how to generate synergies in the future. Read full interview: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/ v3/n1/pdf/nclimate1780.pdf.
Among several keynotes delivered in 2012, Dr. Kabat spoke to the 6th World Water Forum in Marseille in March in the session entitled "2012, European Year of Water," organized by the International Office of Water. At the International Water Association Conference in Busan, Korea, in September, Dr. Kabat gave a keynote speech discussing recent findings on climate change, water, and energy supply.