Friday, June 18, 2010

How it started




This is the Munster church in Bonn, Germany.
Bonn is where it started.

In January, Karen and I visited Bonn briefly, all too briefly, but we had productive conversations with the people at ZEF -as well as good Spanish wine later in the evening.

ZEF is the federal German institute for development research, based at Bonn University.

They run a project for Unesco in western Uzbekistan, the ancient region of Khorezm. For a few years already, the ZEF people have been working on natural resource governance, the potential for innovation there. Water is the big problem. But land policy is an issue as well: how the land is organized, used and owned makes a big difference for development options. That's where I come in, where I can hopefully contribute something.


And, o, yes, this is Uzbekistan:





1 comment:

  1. funny 'road' fact: it is easy to get from our beloved city of Leuven to Bonn: take the E40 highway to Koln, than drive south some km on the A555. But it easier to drive to Urgench, Uzbekistan: in Koln just stay on the E40 and follow it for 4 or 5 day’s. Being the longest road in Europe, connecting Calais in France with Rider in Kazakhstan near the Chinese border, it passes both through Leuven and Urgench. As we all know, all things in the world are connected, and most of it by means of the E40 Highway.

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