CETRAD ─ UTAD Apartado 1013 Vila Real, Portugal 28th November 2014
A MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR OF CETRAD On behalf of the Centre for Transdisciplinary Development Studies (CETRAD) and its institutional partners, I would like to express my gratitude for being offered the opportunity to become a part of OSI’s family of partners, and sincerely hope that our skills and experience may contribute to the success of future collaborative initiatives. In particular, I want to assure participants at the Lima Conference on Protecting the Oceans: A South - South Dialogue on Innovative Strategies and Good Practices to Address the Impacts of Climate Change that, although CETRAD will not be physically present at the meeting, it is wholly committed to the aims and ambitions proposed for the Lima Declaration on how to forge closer links between Africa, South East Asia and the Pacific, South and Central America and the Caribbean. CETRAD strongly feels that its main contribution to the type of action and research undertaken by Ocean Security International and its partners will be to provide cutting edge analysis and policy recommendations related to the local impact of the wide array of problems resulting from our failure to adequately prepare for the livelihood-threatening impact of climate change and our inability to design sustainable measures to protect, conserve and promote maritime, coastal and riparian environments and communities. CETRAD’s considerable experience of working at the interface between the social, economic and natural sciences, along with the extensive networks and partnerships it has constructed over the years, have placed it at the very hub of rural development research, able to combine the contributions of numerous disciplines, and to weld together regional alliances with the capacity to promote smarter, more compassionate and competitive communities, and to empower people to find solutions to the type of challenges emphasised by OSI and its partners. Its well-established cross-border collaboration with Spain, its numerous partnerships with institutions and organizations elsewhere in Europe, and its links with South American and African researchers that share similar concerns, provide it with a privileged vantage point from which to identify the potentialities and limits of rural and regional development in an era of global climate change. CETRAD applauds the excellent work done by the conference organizers, and is confident that, in Lima, participants will find an environment conducive to a fruitful exchange of views and the identification of clear priorities for the future. With CETRAD’s very best wishes
Prof. Chris Gerry (Director) Chair of Economic Theory & Policy, UTAD.