May 2010 - Conference on "Northern Communities in a Changing World"

Tuesday May 25, 2010
8:30am-4:15pm; conference keynote dinner 6:00pm

Conference: Finnish Labour Temple (314 Bay Street)
Keynote Dinner: Prince Arthur Hotel (17 Cumberland Street North)

Registration

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About the Conference

> Click here for the latest draft agenda

On May 25, 2010, the Centre for Northern Studies will be sponsoring a Canadian International Council-Thunder Bay Branch conference to discuss the place of Northern communities in this age of globalization. "Northern Communities in a Changing World: Towards a Better Understanding of Global Competition in a Transnational Environment" is open to the public and will be held at the Finnish Labour Temple, 314 Bay Street and Prince Arthur Hotel from 8:30am to 4:00pm. The dinner keynote address will begin at 6:00pm.

Presenters at the conference include: Shauna MacKinnon, Director, Manitoba Office, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives; Jussi Pakkasvirta, Director, Ibero American Centre, Renvall Institute for Area and Regional Studies, University of Helsinki; Diego Piniero, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Universdad de la República (Uruguay); and Dipak Gyawali, Nepal Water Conservation Foundation. Also invited are representatives from several governmental and non-governmental organizations in Northwestern Ontario and academics whose work focuses on the social impact of shifting economies.

The conference is open to the public. For general information and for conference fees and registration, please contact Dr. Michel Beaulieu, Vice President-Thunder Bay Branch and Co-Director, Centre for Northern Studies, Lakehead University, msbeauli@lakeheadu.ca.

About the Conference Keynote Dinner

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Keynote Speaker Dipak Gyawali is a member of the Royal Nepal Academy of Science and Technology, the New York Academy of Sciences, and he is the Vice-President of the Institute of Social and Environmental Transition. By profession he is both a hydroelectric engineer (Moscovsky Energetichesky Institute) and a political economist studying resource use (Univ. of California at Berkeley) with a research interest in society-technoloogy interface. He served as His Majesty's Minister of Water Resources, (responsible for power, irrigation and flood control), initiating reforms in the electricity and irrigation sectors focused on decentralization and promotion of rural say in governance. Mr. Gyawali is also member of the International Advisory Board of the US- based Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which produced the study on Human Choice and Climate Change and member of the International Research Committee of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies in Colombo. Mr. Gyawali has served on several government commissions related to Himalayan water and energy resources development in Nepal.

He has published extensively both academically and in the popular press on water resource, environment and development issues. He helped found The Nepal Water Conservation Foundation. Until 1996, he served as Chairman of Grameen Swabalamban Bikas Kendra, a grassroots NGO working for rural poverty alleviation with 800 income generating groups in 14 districts of Nepal. He has served as Chairman of Duryog Nivaran, a South Asian initiative promoting alternative perspectives on disaster mitigation, particularly floods, droughts and conflict-related stress.

Michel Beaulieu