Emerging development policy issues and implications for development research was the overall topic that three experts' panels discussed at ZEF on Thursday, September 27. Among the panelists were members of ZEF's International Advisory Board such as Hans van Ginkel, Lisa Sennerby Forsse, and Carolina Vera.

This week's "Alternative Wednesday" will remind us of the consequences of the ever increasing demand in gold. The double feature screening of two short documentaries by Aljazeera will be shown on Wednesday, October 10.

ZEF will host an international academic conference on “Agricultural knowledge and knowledge systems in post-Soviet societies” on September 12 – 13, 2013. International experts will meet to discuss issues such as cultures of knowledge production and sharing.

The first major Crossroads Asia conference on "Figurations of Mobility" will be held from November 22-24, 2012 in Berlin. This conference aims to provide a forum to discuss approaches of figurational sociology with the objective to re-conceptualize Area Studies. Theoretical advantages and shortcomings will be related to concepts such as networks or translocality and empirical case studies.

Around 60 visitors attended the "Water Lecture" held at ZEF on Wednesday, November 21. Waltina Scheumann and Michael Brüntrup (DIE) and Franziska Hollmann (DEG) presented aspects of research and work related to "water grabbing".

This workshop at ZEF continued the research efforts on urban climate change adaptation within the International Consortium for Comparative Water and Development Studies (ICCWaDS), in which ZEF has been collaborating with SOAS in London and the University of Wageningen, the Netherlands, since 2011.

ZEF participated in the 2nd Scientific Conference of the UNCCD (United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification) on the "Economic assessment of desertification, sustainable land management and resilience of arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas", held in Bonn, April 9-12, 2013.

ZEF will co-organize a public panel discussion on:

"Women's rights in Afghanistan: status quo and post-2014" on May 27, 2 p.m.

in cooperation with RLC, BICC and Cross Roads Asia.

At the end of the international conference on "Water in the Anthropocene: Challenges for science and governance", held in Bonn last week, the participants called for action to achieve global and sustainable water security. The conference was organized by GWSP and supported by BMBF. A large number of ZEF researchers were among the approximately 300 conference participants.

The "Alternative Nobel" laureates Sima Samar, an Afghan physician and human rights activist, and Monika Hauser, founder of the Germany-based NGO "Medica Mondiale" have been discussing the issue of human and women's rights in Afghanistan at a panel discussion held at ZEF on Monday, May 27.