16 August 2015
Field excursion focusing on land condition, restoration and management
The UNU-LRT fellows have just finished a four day excursion to the west and northwest of Iceland. The main goal was to provide the fellows with first-hand experience on land management issues and how human land use can have a major impact on land condition. Sites were visited that illustrate how past human land use reduced the resilience of the land to the extent that when combined with natural factors it resulted in almost complete loss of vegetation and soil. Such collapsed ecosystems take very long to restore even though much effort is put into restoration, and former productivity may be hard to reach as could vividly be observed in the excursion.
4 August 2015
Open Call for Research Grants
The EDDA Center at the University of Iceland is an interdisciplinary Center of Excellence in critical contemporary research, with a special emphasis on equality and diversity. EDDA now invites applications for research grants which support the mission of UNU-GEST
20 July 2015
Former UNU fellow appointed to Director position in Uganda
Former UNU-FTP fellow and scholarship recipient, Taabu Anthony Munyaho, has recently been selected for the Director position at the National Fisheries Resources Research Institute (NaFIRI) in Uganda.
17 July 2015
High-level symposium on land degradation neutrality at the third International Conference on Financing for Development
UNU-LRT participated in a high-level symposium on land degradation neutrality at the third International Conference on Financing for Development, which was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on 13-16 July. The symposium was hosted by the Governments of Iceland and Namibia (on behalf of the Group of Friends on Desertification, Land Degradation and Drought) in cooperation with the State of Qatar, United Nations University, United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) secretariat, UNDP and Biovision.
15 July 2015
The Rector of UNU visited the Iceland Programmes
Last week, the Rector of UNU, Dr David Malone, visited the four Iceland based UNU Programmes: UNU-GTP, UNU-FTP, UNU-LRT, and UNU-GEST.
9 July 2015
UNU Rector Dr David Malone visits UNU-LRT
The UNU Rector Dr David Malone visited the four UNU programmes hosted in Iceland this week: the Geothermal, Fisheries, Gender Equality and Land Restoration Training Programmes. UNU-LRT welcomed the Rector at the headquarters of the Soil Conservation Service of Iceland (SCSI) where the UNU-LRT fellows stay these days. A workshop was held at SCSI where UNU-LRT Director introduced the activities, priorities and future directions of the programme, and the fellows shared experiences from their work at home and told how they anticipate the training at UNU-LRT will benefit them and their institutions when back home at work. The research activities and international cooperation of the two implementing institutions of UNU-LRT, the Agricultural University of Iceland and SCSI, were also introduced.