13th Annual Scientific Conference (ASCON XIII)

Call for Abstracts
(Deadline for submission of abstracts: 30 November 2009)

8-11 February 2010
ICDDR,B, Dhaka, Bangladesh
"Facing the Challenge of Climate Change"
Venue: Pan Pacific Sonargaon Dhaka

Welcome to the 13th Annual Scientific Conference (ASCON XIII) of the Centre to be held on Monday 8 to Thursday 11 February 2010.

We invite scientists, health professionals, programme managers, community organizers, and policy-makers to take part in ASCON XIII. Interested persons are invited to submit abstracts, keeping the theme of the Conference—Facing the Challenge of Climate Change in mind. This forum provides an opportunity to disseminate and share results of research, experience, and lessons learnt from recent projects and programmes. ASCON XIII will concentrate on the following sub-themes:

1. Climate change and environmental health

• This will focus on environmental contamination of water, air, and food.
• It may include contamination of water and food supplies with heavy metals, insecticides, and arsenic as well as air pollution with lead, carbon monoxide, large and small particulate matter.
• Effects on pre- and postnatal exposure, child development, immunotoxicity, genetic polymorphism.

2. Climate change and livelihood consequences

• This will focus on population relocation in response to rising sea levels, intrusion of saline water in surface water bodies affecting crops, increasing salination of water supplies for consumption and agricultural irrigation, as well as more extreme weather events.
• It may also involve shift in occupations due to changed ecology, outmigration as a result of loss of homestead and agricultural land.
• The overall focus will be on the impact on household poverty through the impact of changing weather conditions, both directly
  (extreme weather events, increasing heat stress) and indirectly (changes to water availability, etc.).

3. Climate change and impact on infectious diseases

• This will focus on cholera, malaria, dengue fever, kala-azar (VL), and certain viral diseases which are believed to be susceptible
  to temperature, rainfall and humidity conditions

4. Climate change impacts on food security and nutritional status

• The major negative impact of climate change in Bangladesh may be on nutritional status, through reductions in food production. This theme will focus on the wide range of factors affecting agricultural output, including irrigation water supplies, new drought, flood and salt-resistant varieties of staple foods like rice and wheat, changes in monsoon rains, and changes in cropping patterns, etc.

5. Realistic responses to climate change in Bangladesh

• What options are realistically available to Bangladesh to minimize the negative impacts of climate change? These include traditional responses of construction of embankments, elevating houses on plinths (platforms) in flood-prone areas, and relocation of populations in areas prone to river erosion and rising sea levels (through official relocation programmes or spontaneously), to protection of water supplies through local action and international agreements regarding transboundary rivers.
• This theme needs to include discussion of global (north-south) protocols which will ultimately determine the fate of vulnerable countries like Bangladesh, that must include carbon emissions and strategies to minimize increases in global levels.

ASCON XIII is expected to address all of the above issues and to identify the essential tasks and future directions to be determined for preparing Bangladesh and other vulnerable countries to face the challenge of climate change.

The programme is designed to be varied, stimulating, and relevant to Bangladesh, South Asian and other developing-country participants.

There will also be several plenary sessions.

Abstracts should be prepared following the abstract-preparation guidelines and forwarded to: ascon13@icddrb.org by 30 November 2009 at the latest.

We look forward to welcoming you to ICDDR,B.