Simone de Hek, an international consultant who helps diverse groups work together to resolve natural resource issues, will speak at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point on Tuesday, March 3, at 7 p.m. in the Dreyfus University Center Theater.
Part of the GEM Critical Issues International Seminar Series, the lecture is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the Global Environmental Management Education Center, a center within the College of Natural Resources at UWSP.
De Hek will present “Public-private Partnerships for Water: Are We Together?” More than a billion people do not have access to safe drinking water, according to the World Health Organization. Private ownership of water sources and systems threatens to make water unaffordable to some. How people obtain access to clean water is a negotiation process and it is vitally important to understand who has a stake in the issue and that all are participating in the process, de Hek says.
De Hek has worked on natural resource issues in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, including with the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations on cases related to public and private access to safe drinking water and on payments for ecosystems services.
She is a member of the Kenya Forest Working Group and serves as an external adviser to “Tree is Life” in Kenya, a nonprofit organization for which she also has served as interim director.
Based in The Netherlands, de Hek is the third speaker in the GEM Critical Issues Seminar Series this academic year.
More information about series speakers is on the Web at http://www.uwsp.edu/cnr/gem. The series is sponsored by GEM with funding through the USDA Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.
Contact: Ron Tschida, communications coordinator of GEM, 715-346-4266 or Ron.Tschida@uwsp.edu
