Pamukkale Recommendations

On Urbanisation, Land Use, Land Degradation and Environment

As reported in the last issue of the Newsletter (July-September 2009), an international workshop on Urbanisation, Land Use, Land Degradation and Environment was organised by the NAM S&T Centre at Denizli, Turkey on 28^th September - 1^st October 2009 in which the following set of recommendations was adopted.
 

WE, THE SCIENTISTS, TECHNOLOGISTS, PROFESSIONALS, ACADEMICIANS AND ADMINISTRATORS FROM Argentina, Bulgaria, Canada, North Cyprus, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Kenya, Mauritius, Myanmar, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tanzania, Turkey, U.K., and Vietnam,

PARTICIPATING IN the International Workshop on URBANISATION, LAND USE, LAND DEGRADATION & ENVIRONMENT, jointly organized by the Pamukkale University, Turkish Scientific & Technical Research Organisation (TUBITAK) and the Centre for Science and Technology of the Non-Aligned and Other Developing Countries (NAM S&T Centre) during 28th September - 1st October 2009 at Denizli, Turkey,

HAVING EXTENSIVELY DELIBERATED ON various issues related to knowledge, approaches and experiences concerning the problems and prospects on the URBANISATION, LAND USE, LAND DEGRADATION & ENVIRONMENT,

UNANIMOUSLY EXPRESSING that the workshop has been a resounding success,

CONVEYING GRATITUDE TO the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Governorate of Denizli, Mayorship of Denizli and Pamukkale University,

UNANIMOUSLY CONCLUDE THAT the world is facing a serious environmental crisis due to the unsustainable use of the natural resources and indiscriminate addition of pollutants to the environment. The present challenge faced on this 'Warming Earth' is to make it greener and cleaner before it is passed on to the next generation. The developing countries are custodians of majority of the World's biodiversity, but alien species and land transformations are a threat to the wealth creation of the communities in these countries. This problem needs to be addressed with top priority.

Realising the gravity of the hazards of rapid urbanisation and intense land use leading to immense damage to human habitat and massive loss of biodiversity, these are not looked upon as opportunities to 'build back better', and efforts and investments to learn from land degradation leave much to be desired, although presence of relevant legislations for disorganised and ill-planned constructions in most part of the world do exist. Thus there is an urgent need for proper land use planning practices, dissemination of knowledge and public awareness with respect to environmental degradation. The culture of learning from disasters is growing at a very slow pace, but efforts may be made to ensure that no more lives will be lost on recurrence of such events in future by making sincere and determined efforts in this connection.

Many of the NAM and other developing countries are hit by recurring natural disasters and their problems are more or less of the same genre, and there remains great scope to build joint programmes and partnerships in disaster mitigation and management.

People need right information at the right place at the right time, but not enough is being done to provide easy access to useable information. Proactive initiatives are seldom taken to generate reliable and continuous field data to bridge the information gaps and make practical use of the new knowledge, procedures and techniques to improve disaster specific investigations, measurements, mapping, analyses and design. "Global Environmental Information System" also needs to be taken into consideration for implementation.

Views of the first responders, eyewitnesses, survivors, crisis managers, policy makers, planners, builders, researchers, educators, social scientists and NGOs are seldom systematically studied, analyzed and documented to find appropriate solutions as mitigation strategy.

WE, THE PARTICIPANTS OF THE PAMUKKALE WORKSHOP strongly recommend and propose the following concrete actions by the concerned authorities in all countries with immediate effect:

Governmental and non-governmental organizations may enhance theoretical, technical and practical knowledge as well as skills among professionals to identify measures for urbanisation, land use, land degradation and environment to ensure appropriate protection of our planet.

National / International training events, technical workshops, seminars, and training programmes may be organised together with other educational and awareness activities for administrative & technical personnel in all sectors of the economy about appropriate use of productive lands.

Public may be encouraged and educated by adopting scientifically validated protection measures against degradative forces, and be mandated to maintain regular inspection records.

National standards or adoption of international standards for land use planning may be developed and made mandatory to concerned parties. Dangers due to land degradation may be ensured for national heritage sites by investigating their present status and designing and implementing effective and durable protection systems.

Basic concepts of land use and environmental protection / safety may be included in the curricula of institutions and schools.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Communities may be empowered to integrate their socio-economic growth strategies, water conservation and waste minimization practices to achieve green growth and conservation of natural resources to benefit the current and future generations.

Appropriate land use planning instructions in the risky areas may be properly displayed. Due to increase of land degradation hazards in risky areas it may be made mandatory to have highest level of protection in these areas by extensively investigating the conditions of the existing urbanisation and land use practices, and appropriate safety measures taken for an effective land use planning systems for urbanisation.

Research institutes may be supported to upgrade the existing conditions by developing databases and encouraged to carry out research on better land use planning and environmental protection technologies to sensitize the concerned authorities for rectifying the shortcomings.

Urban planners, architects and engineers may avail of every opportunity offered by the disasters to find out what really went wrong. They may reveal, and not conceal, the failure stories.

Policy makers may integrate disaster management with the development process and avail every opportunity to test their policies against disasters.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Every country may invest appropriately and adequately in reliably mapping and forecasting multi-hazard scenarios. Time-bound action plans backed by adequate resources may be evolved for the most vulnerable regions.

When planning for immediate action, disaster management machinery may be swift enough to respond to complex situations unfolded by every type of disaster.

Countries may be networked with a risk detection system to enable the forecast and data collection.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Countries may streamline their laws and regulations to facilitate all aspects of land use planning, thereby bringing their regulations into compliance with environment friendly policies. Global encouragement is needed for all countries especially the developed ones to use the "Green Energy" such as solar, wind, water and bioenergy, instead of fuel or, even worse form the nuclear energy.

Concerned government agencies may develop short- and long-term 'Rolling Strategic Plans' in view of the fast emerging scenario of multi-hazards and ensure effective execution of sound land use planning practices, and spread of disaster education and training.

Developing nations may urgently develop comprehensive national geo-referenced inventories, foster transparent and accountable approaches involving local communities and stakeholders that shall provide a reliable baseline in land-use, planning and zonation decisions.

Appeal to the media - print and electronic - to join in giving clarion call to decision makers and public at large to wake up to the potent threat and to forearm by promoting green concepts and taking up, inter alia, energy efficiency related activities as part of their social responsibility. Earth may be made a greener and cleaner place now before it is passed on to the next generation. This is critical now at a time when global warming and climate change pose significant challenges to the entire world. We actively promote adherence to the ethical norms for the appropriate use of our land resources.

Done this day, the 1^st October 2009, at Pamukkale - Denizli, Turkey.