188 / 336
[
] 188
Managing water: from local wisdom
to modern science
Ignasius D. A. Sutapa, Executive Secretary, Asia Pacific Centre for Ecohydrology
T
he Asia Pacific Centre for Ecohydrology (APCE) is a
category II centre of the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). It
focuses on ecological approaches to water resources manage-
ment, to provide sustainable water for the people by harnessing
science and technology, education and culture. APCE is commit-
ted to contributing towards overcoming current and important
issues of national, regional and global interest, such as poverty,
climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction.
Several activities have been planned to help achieve this objective.
These activities benefit from the results of past and current research
activities conducted by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI)
and its partners.
APCE has and develops expertise and experience in:
• relationships between ecological pattern and hydrological process
• disturbance and dynamics in natural and anthropogenic ecology
and hydrology
• ecohydrological approaches to biodiversity conservation,
environmental management and ecological restoration
• integrating hydrology with ecological planning,
design and architecture
• transdisciplinary studies of regional sustainability from
the perspectives of ecohydrology, ecology or both.
Some recent activities are detailed below.
Integrated Flood Analysis System course
The Asia and Pacific region has various climate char-
acteristics that put it at risk from hydrometeorological
hazards which are often associated with extreme events.
Some countries in the region are vulnerable to floods,
and the annual flood losses are too high for any govern-
ment to bear.
A technical course was organized based on the frame-
work of the Flood Forecasting and Warning System
which was conducted in 10 countries (Australia,
Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Lao People’s Democratic
Republic, Malaysia, the Philippines, the Republic of
Korea, Thailand and Vietnam). This Integrated Flood
W
ater
C
ooperation
, S
ustainability
and
P
overty
E
radication
One of the constructed wetlands used to improve domestic wastewater treatment
Image: APCE