News August 2005

Barbara Loe Fisher, President of the National Vaccine Information Center and Geoffrey Evans, Director of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

Alan R. Hinman, Senior Public Health Scientist at the Public Health Informatics Institute; Rudy Jackson, Professor Emeritus at Morehouse School of Medicine; and Mona Steele, President of the Wisconsin Women's Network.

Roger H. Bernier, Senior Advisor for Scientific Strategy and Innovation at the Center for Disease Control and Jeffrey Levi of the Trust for America's Health

Washington, DC, July 13-14, 2005. The headlines almost leap from the pages of recent journals. "Pandemic flu outbreak could kill 500,000 in U.S." was the lead for a June 25, 2005 Associated Press article by Kevin Freking reporting the findings of a Trust for America's Health report. According to the report, more than a half-million people could die and more than 2.3 million could be hospitalized if a moderately severe strain of pandemic flu virus hits the United States. The July/August 2005 edition of Foreign Affairs includes a special section, The Next Pandemic? as a call to action because international health officials are warning that a deadly avian influenza virus (H5N1) may soon spread rapidly, overwhelming unprepared health systems in rich and poor countries alike. Nature magazine is providing additional information on the medical and scientific aspects of the H5N1 virus.

Preparing for a flu pandemic involves myriad issues and policy questions. "What Do We Do About Flu?" a public engagement project sponsored by the Lounsbery Foundation, Institute of Medicine, The Keystone Center, Center for Disease Control National Immunization Program, Department of Health and Human Services National Program Office, and the Study Circles Resource Center, and Emory University will address just one of those issues. The project will engage a broad range of federal, tribal, state, and local officials, academics, NGOs, and health care providers who will focus on the narrow question of how to prioritize the use of influenza vaccine. The result of the project will be a set of proposed guidelines for determining which groups in the population require the earliest protection against influenza at the outset of an influenza pandemic when supplies of vaccine are still limited. The first of two national meetings of the project will take place on July 13-14 at the Institute of Medicine in Washington, DC.

Mervyn Tano, president of the International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management, was asked to participate in the project. Tano said at first, the idea of establishing and ranking potential goals for a pandemic influenza vaccination program gave him pause. "But," he said, "if the project is going to determine which categories of people should be associated for each of the ranked goals, then it's important that indigenous peoples's interests are considered and that care be taken that indigenous peoples are not defined out of any prioritization program." Based on the work the International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management has done on cultural risk with Stuart Harris of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and Barbara Harper who was with the Yakama Indian Nation, Tano said it's clear that not only the health of individuals is at risk but that of the tribe's culture and identity as well. Tano said he is uncomfortable with a goal that talks of maintaining the health of persons who provide the greatest economic benefit to the community. "I think we need to ask Indian tribes and other native peoples how they would rank the preservation of language, stories, and other elements of native culture. It seems to me that when there are only one or two remaining speakers of a language, we need to make the preservation of the maintenance of their help one of the highest priorities" Tano is also concerned that definitions of clergy, public health professionals, and direct health care providers consider Indian and other indigenous peoples's definitions of those terms.

Imagery and Identity: Imagining the Futures of Indigenous Peoples

The International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management's Second Indigenous Film & Arts Festival will be taking place on October 6-10, 2005 in Denver. Films will be screened from the 6th to the 9th. Click here for the Indigenous Film & Arts Festival schedule.

On October 10, as part of the festival, the Insitute will be holding a roundtable entitled Imagery and Identity: Imagining the Futures of Indigenous Peoples. The Institute is assembling thirty filmmakers, artists, writers, attorneys, educators, tribal leaders, students, and others from the United States, Canada, and New Zealand to look at the role identity has played and can play in defining the aspirations, authority, and dignity of indigenous peoples.

Purposes. The purposes of the roundtable are threefold: First, to demonstrate how and why the identity of indigenous peoples have been shaped in the past; second, to propose preferred futures for indigenous peoples; and third, to suggest the kinds of research, policies, partnerships, and collaboration that can help native peoples realize their preferred futures.

Framework. Roundtable participants will engage in an interactive, facilitated dialogue that will examine the following questions.

American University's Washington Internships for Native Students

The WINS Program is a unique experience for American Indian and Alaskan Native Students to work and study in Washington DC for the semester or the summer. Students work 35- 40 hours a week in a Federal Agency which sponsors American Indian and Alaska Native students from across the country in a Washington DC program of internship and study. Students (also called WINS interns) take three courses in the fall or spring term, earning 12 credit hours or 2 courses in the summer earning 6 credit hours.

Through the WINS sponsorship program interns receive:

You are eligible if you are currently enrolled in an academic program, will have 60 credits earned by program start date and maintain at least a 2.5 cumulative GPA.

For more information and eligibility requirements or to complete an application please visit our website at www.american.edu/wins or call American University at 1-800-853-3076.

Applications for the Spring 2006 semester are due October 7, 2005.

Early Applications for Summer 2006 at FBI, Department of Defense or State due November 4, 2005, all other summer internship applications are due February 3, 2006.

UNESCO Register of Good Practices in Language Preservation - Call for Submissions

In accordance with its mission to protect and promote cultural diversity, and in particular to encourage the safeguarding of endangered languages as an essential part of the living heritage of humanity, UNESCO is calling for submissions to its online 'Register of Good Practices in Language Preservation' under the Endangered Languages Programme. UNESCO is interested in collecting reports on both ongoing and past projects.

The purpose of this Register is to identify and collect reports concerning efforts in language preservation, as a means to facilitate the dissemination of Good Practice knowledge, expertise and experience in this area, and thus to encourage future application and adaptation worldwide. To this end, we ask speaker communities, governmental and non-governmental organisations, and related experts to share their good experiences in the preservation, revitalisation and promotion of endangered languages with a wider public, via our Good Practices database.

Registry in this database is also meant to ensure the visibility, recognition, and accessibility of the projects entered (the UNESCO portal recording over 10 million hits on average every month).

UNESCO is soliciting the submission of case reports on any form of community-based projects concerning language preservation, e.g. reports on local/ regional projects in education, revitalisation, standardisation, community development, awareness raising, capacity building, documentation, use of new technologies, etc. (Note: These can be projects that do not focus on language exclusively but include language as one aspect among their concerns)

Submissions will be reviewed by UNESCO experts prior to web publication to ensure consistency.

Your participation is greatly appreciated – it helps establish a valuable service of knowledge transfer in language preservation, for future efforts and projects worldwide that safeguard language diversity as an important aspect of our living heritage.

New Zealand Prepares for Carbon Tax

New Zealanders will pay an extra NZ$2.90 (£1.11) a week for electricity, petrol and gas when the country becomes the first in the world to introduce a carbon tax to address global warming.

It is expected to add about 6% to household energy prices and 9% for most businesses but will help the economy in the long run, according to Pete Hodgson, the minister responsible for climate change policy.

Mr Hodgson set the tax yesterday at NZ$11 a metric tonne of carbon emitted. It will come into effect in two years. "If we are going to tackle climate change, we need to start taking environmental costs into account in the economic choices we make," he said.

The tax, planned after New Zealand signed up to the Kyoto protocol, would make polluting energy sources such as coal and oil more expensive than cleaner ones such as hydro, wind and solar, he said.

The experiment will be watched closely by bigger countries which are also com mitted to reducing carbon emissions but are failing to reduce energy demand.

The government estimates the tax will raise about NZ$360m a year but has said it will not increase revenues.

"It will be balanced by other tax changes so there is no net increase in government revenue," a government spokesman said yesterday.

The most energy-intensive businesses will be exempted so they are not forced to shut or relocate. In return companies such as Comalco, which uses 15% of the country's power, and Carter Holt Harvey, the country's biggest sawmill, must commit to reducing carbon emissions.

New Zealand, which produces about 29% of its electricity from gas- or coal-fired power stations, has a record of introducing the idea of green taxes but then not implementing them. In 2003 the government planned to impose a methane tax on farmers because flatulence of cows and sheep was responsible for more than half of New Zealand's total greenhouse gas emissions. But that was abandoned after criticism from farmers, who labelled it a "fart tax".

Climate change is one of the biggest environmental challenges facing the world today. It is a global problem that needs a global solution. In ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, New Zealand has joined more than 140 other countries in making a strong commitment to begin controlling emissions of greenhouse gases that cause climate change.

The Kyoto Protocol is designed to begin a long-term global economic transition to a future in which limits will increasingly be put on emissions. It does this by attaching a price to greenhouse gas emissions. That price is determined through the international trading of emissions units, with each unit representing one tonne of carbon dioxide or equivalent. Under Kyoto, the price of fossil fuels better reflects the environmental costs of using them, and business and consumer choices will begin to take these environmental costs into account.

Following extensive consultation, in 2002 the government announced a package of policies that New Zealand will implement in responding to climate change. As part of that package, it was decided that the international price of emissions should initially be reflected in our economy through a carbon tax, approximating the international price of emissions but capped at NZ$25/tonne for the first Kyoto commitment period, 2008 to 2012. Carbon tax revenue will not be used to improve the Crown's fiscal position: it will be recycled into the economy through the tax system.

New Zealand views the carbon tax as a transitional path toward full or partial emissions trading, which may become a better option as world markets develop.

Most New Zealand consumers and businesses will not pay the tax directly. Rather, they will see changes in the relative prices of different sources of energy, transport options, and other products. These price changes will provide an incentive to switch to cleaner energy sources and make better use of energy.

Calendar

September 2005

Mapping for Change: International Conference on Participatory Spatial Information Management and Communication
September 7-10, 2005
Nairobi, Kenya
The conference will bring together people with extensive practical experience in Participatory GIS (PGIS) and community mapping in Developing Countries and First Nations. The focus of the event will be on sharing experiences and defining good practices for making geographic information technologies and systems available to less-favored groups in society in order to enhance their capacity in generating, managing and communicating spatial information.
For more information on the conference and other relevant links please see http://pgis2005.cta.int

Community Health Assessment Conference
September 20-22, 2005
Renaissance Seattle Hotel, Seattle, WA
Sponsored by the CDC Assessment Initiative and the National Association for Public Health Statistics and Information Systems Leadership Institute to share information on innovative systems and methods that improve the way data is used to inform public health programs, services, and policy at the state and local level.
Register at http://www.psava.com/cha2005/register1.asp

SWANA's WasteCon 2005
September 27-29, 2005
Austin, Texas
For more information see: http://www.wastecon.org or call: 800-467-9262

November 2005

February 2006

WM '06 (Call for Abstracts)
February 26-March 2, 2006
Tucson, Arizona
Abstract submission deadline: August 31, 2005
Information at http://www.wmsym.org under "Latest News."

International Institute for
Indigenous Resource Management

News from the Institute, August 2005

In this issue:

Status Report on Pandemic Flu Vaccination Priorities Public Engagement Pilot Project