Another successful CoCooN matchmaking meeting in Cali
30 September 2009
The second matchmaking meeting of the CoCooN Programme, which was held on 22 and 23 September in Cali, Colombia, was very successful. More than 40 participants from eight countries attended to this workshop. As in the Addis Ababa meeting held a week before, this workshop enabled its participants to present, discuss and exchange knowledge about Conflict and Cooperation over Natural Resources in Developing Countries (CoCooN). The motivation and openness of the participants resulted in lively discussions and in constructive partnerships between participants from North and South, research and non-research institutes, and from different disciplines.
After encouraging opening words from the Netherlands Ambassador to Colombia, the Vice-Minister for Environment of Colombia and the Director-General of CIAT, which hosted the event, the participants energetically used the opportunity to share their expertise among each other and to seek or extend partnerships. The participants had the chance of developing or elaborating interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary consortia and of cooperating in innovative and out of the box CoCooN applications.
In three parallel sessions, participants gave brief presentations and subsequently identified the burning issues and knowledge gaps for the three CoCooN themes of respectively Conflicts, land rights and land-use change; Water resources, conflict and cooperation; and Resource exploitation, global trade and conflict. On the second day of the workshop, participants linked this thematic focus to the challenges of combining scientific and action research, capacity development and advocacy and partnerships for conflict management. After a speed dating event, consortia negotiations started, resulting in at least five initiatives for which proposals will be developed. New initiatives were developed and existing initiatives were infused with new perspectives and new partners.
The programme, reports and presentations of this matchmaking meeting are now available here.