Video: Katoomba XVII Conference - June 2010
US Deputy Mission Chief Virginia Palmer, U.S. Embassy Hanoi, Vietnam
The Southeast Asia “Katoomba Meeting” on Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) and related events were held in Vietnam last week. Organized by Forest Trends as part of USAID/EGAT’s Standing Forests Conservation Markets Initiative under the TransLinks project led by Wildlife Conservation Society, the week’s events were co-hosted by USAID/Bangkok’s Asia Regional Biodiversity Conservation Program (Winrock International), which first held a Regional Workshop on Policy Enabling Conditions for PES in Da Lat, and field visit to its pilot Payment for Watershed/Hydropower Services project in Lam Dong province (June 21-22).
The public two days of the Katoomba program in Hanoi, opened byVietnam’s Vice Prime Minister and the US Deputy Chief of Mission, attracted about 400 people (June 23-24). Other featured topics included reduced carbon emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD), biodiversity offsets, and benefit sharing. This was followed by a 2 day Katoomba Workshop on Mangroves, Coastal Management, and Carbon Sequestration (June 25-27) at Xuan Thuy National Park, in Nam Dinh Province.
Other sponsors and partners of the Katoomba Meeting included the [Gordon and Betty] Moore and Macarthur Foundations, GTZ (Germany), SNV (Netherlands), UN-REDD, ICRAF, and CIFOR.
Speaker Biography:
Virginia Palmer is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service. She began her duties as Deputy Chief of Mission in Hanoi in August 2008. She was the Deputy Coordinator for Counterterrorism from September 2005 to May 2008. Prior to that, she was the Director of the East Asia Bureau’s Office of Economic Policy. She was Economic Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. Previous tours include Beijing, Hong Kong, Harare, Calgary, the Office of Maghreb Affairs, and the Operations Center in the State Department.
For More Information Contact:
Michael Colby, Natural Resources Economics Advisor, USAID/ EGAT/ Office of Natural Resources Management
Steve Zwick, Managing Editor of Ecosystem Marketplace
