Latin America; in English (pdf) - Transboundary Freshwater Dispute ...

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This project, exemplary of the unifying force of transboundary waters, was built on the spirit of incredible collaboration
among researchers and staff at the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi, Kenya, and two of
the partners in the Universities Partnership for Transboundary Waters: the Oregon State University Department of
Geosciences in the United States and Universidad Nacional Costa Rica, Centro Mesoamericano de Desarollo
Sostenible del Trópico Seco (UNA-CEMEDE), as well numerous other individuals from around the world who
responded to our requests for data, information, and reviews.
First and foremost at UNEP, we would like to thank Achim Steiner, United Nations Under-Secretary General
and UNEP Executive Director, Steve Lonergan and Peter Gilruth, the former and current directors of UNEP’s
Division of Early Warning and Assessment (DEWA), and Halifa Drammeh, Special Adviser to the Office of the
Executive Director, for their consistent encouragement and support throughout this project. We would also like to
acknowledge: Salif Diop, Senior Programme Officer and Head of DEWA’s Ecosystem Section, who provided vital
professional oversight; Patrick M’mayi, DEWA Programme Officer, who coordinated editorial contributions; Beth
Ingraham, who provided guidance on UNEP publication rules; Audrey Ringler, who provided cartographic input
and advice; Winnie Gaitho, who coordinated communication between partners; interns Martin Schaefer, Hanna
Lindblom and Vinay Rajdev, who read early drafts and provided editorial support; and Arun Elhance, who
assisted with the preface. A special ‘thank you’ goes to those UNEP staff who provided data for the report,
particularly Johannes Akiwumi and Lal Kurukulasuriya. Last but not least, we would like to thank: Lesyl Puyol at
UNEP’s Division for Regional Cooperation and Kakuko Nagatani and Silvia Gidia at DEWA’s Regional Office for
Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) for reviewing the manuscript; Ricardo Sánchez Sosa, Regional Director
of DEWA-LAC, for reviewing the foreword; and the Belgian Government for the financial support that made this
project possible.
We are more grateful than we can say to managing editor Caryn M. Davis, of Cascadia Editing, for her
dedication to multiple aspects of this project, including editing, design and layout, and coordinating publication;
to artist Gretchen Bracher for design consultation, and to photographers from ForestryImages.org, NOAA, and
USAID, and especially Gretchen Bracher, Michael Campana, Keith Davis, Katherine Hayden, David R. Huskins,
Rolando León, Iva Nafzinger, and Laniesse Sherman, who generously provided images for this report. Finally,
PREFACE ???
thanks go to Ruben Casas for translating the report into Spanish, and special thanks to Irma L. Enríques de
Bañuelos, Philomath, Oregon, for editing the Spanish version of the report.
At Oregon State University, we would like to thank Becci Anderson for her assistance with cartography, and
Sam Littlefield for his late hours and attention to detail. Other members of the Geosciences team who contributed
their time and expertise to the project include Todd Jarvis and Erick Stemmerman. We gratefully acknowledge
Steve W. Hostetler for furnishing manipulated HADCM3 climate models. Special thanks to Melissa Carper for her
willingness to jump in during the crunch and to Karen Logan, our departmental administrator, who helped to support
the backbone of the project through multiple contracts and budget oversight. A big thank you to Marloes Bakker for
her attention to detail and mastery of the multiple tables associated with this project; and special thanks to Nathan
Eidem for his cheerful willingness to handle any task, from research questions to data checking to creating maps
as needed. Finally, many thanks to Henri Compaore who helped to translate questionnaires into French.
This was an extraordinarily data-intensive project, which relied on the generosity of many researchers around
the world who are committed to open distribution of their incredibly rich data sets, among them Charles Vörösmarty
and Ellen Marie Douglas, from the Complex Systems Research Center, Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and
Space, University of New Hampshire, who generously provided their five-year-mean historical global runoff data.
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