Announcements

Dr. Anton Shkaruba will lecture on the topic "Rural–urban peripheries under socioeconomic transitions in Belarus and Russia: Changing planning contexts, lasting legacies, and growing pressure".

Lecture is held in Kreutzwaldi 5 - 2C5 at 14.30 o'clock on March 8th. Lecture is in english.

Anton Shkaruba is the director and the general partner of Erda RTE, research affiliate and visiting lecturer at Central European University in Budapest (Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy). His background is geography (BSc minor in terrestrial hydrology, PhD in geographical ecology) and environmental science. His expertise lies in vulnerability and adaptation analysis of forest and urban ecosystems; in biodiversity conservation and ecosystem governance; in mapping and visualisation environmental governance regimes; since recent also in governance of disasters and post-disaster sense-making and adaptation. He is teaching at Central European University courses on adaptation, sustainable forestry and carbon sequestration in ecosystems; he is visiting faculty at several universities in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine under projects funded by the EU Erasmus+ program and grant programs of the Visegrad Foundation. He is regularly involved in summer schools and other intensive training sessions, both as a resource person an organiser, including summer schools of CEU SUN, Asia-Pacific Network, Open Society Foundation and Swedish Institute. He had a number of consultancy engagements related to development of flexible mechanisms of Kyoto Protocol (UNDP Belarus) and climate-proof cities (EuropeAid, SIDA); he was involved in institutional research grant projects at Central European University on ecosystem vulnerability research, and FP5-7 projects related to ecosystem management and governance of natural resources.

Dr. Shkaruba has vast experience with capacity building for higher education in Eastern Europe, including involvement to four Tempus, three Jean-Monnet and two Visegrad projects, and organisation of research training networks for early stage faculty and researchers in Belarus, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine through grants of Swedish Institute, Asia-Pacific Network, UNDP, Open Society Foundation. Anton is actively involved to IPBES (The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) process since its start, first as a scoping expert for regional and sub-regional assessments, and then as a contributing and a lead author of the assessment report for Europe and Central Asia.

Additional information: prof. Kalev Sepp, kalev.sepp@emu.ee