Welcome to Our Future

GEE-21 is a non-profit organization that conducts research and educational activities dealing with issues of energy, water, climate change and environment. It has an international Board of Directors, and is based in Honolulu, Hawaii. The substantive work of GEE-21 is being carried out in four broad themes:

1. Asia’s changing role in global climate change
2. Developing environment-friendly energy resources
3. Meeting the energy and water needs of South Asia
4. Managing land resources

Under theme 1, the paper by David Street et al. analyses the annual emission trends of sulfur dioxide, black carbon, and organic carbon in East Asia for the period 1980-2000, and asks the question whether aerosols over China peaked during the 1990s. Toufiq Siddiqi’s paper on “The Evolving Role of Asia in Global Climate Change” and the presentations by Tone Skogen  on “Norway’s Policies to Reduce Emissions of Greenhouse Gases through Carbon capture and storage”, by Yonghun Jung  on “A Road to the Low-Carbon Future: Korean Perspective”  also deal with climate change issues

The two presentations by Hans-Joachim Ziesing on “Germany’s Policy Schemes to Foster Renewable Energy Deployment”, and by and by Naoko Doi on “Global Economic Crisis and the Energy sector – Challenges and Opportunities for Japan overlap themes 1 and 2, and were presented at a Conference in August 2009 organized by the Korea Energy Economics Institute and the East-West Center, and supported by GEE-21. The presentations by Tone Skogen  and Yonghun Jung mentioned earlier are also from this Conference. Toufiq Siddiqi’s discussion paper on “Integrating Energy Policies in South Asia” points out the need to integrate policies for energy, environment, and transportation, and is illustrative of theme 2.

Issues of water security in South Asia (theme 3) are discussed extensively in two books prepared by GEE-21. These are based on a project on “Water and Security in South Asia” sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and undertaken in collaboration with the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. The two volumes, titled “Water Conflicts in South Asia” and “Water Needs in South Asia” are available from GEE-21. The contents of the Reports (without the specially prepared maps and charts) are available for downloading from the GEE-21 Publication site.

In the newly initiated theme of “Managing Land Resources” (theme 4), GEE-21 partially supported a presentation by Sugato Dutt of the University of Hawaii at the Pacific Coast Geographers Conference in San Diego last year. The paper, entitled “Masked by the Tiger: an evaluative study of rural livelihoods and conservation values in Northeast India”, is posted on the Publications Page.

To contact GEE-21 please email t.siddiqi@att.net.