15.2.17 | In the framework of the DFG-funded project “Epistemic Mobilities and the Governance of Environmental Risks in Island Southeast Asia (EMERSA)” the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT), represented by Prof. Dr. Anna-Katharina Hornidge, signed its first Cooperation Agreement with the President of the University of Asia the Pacific (UA&P), Dr. Winston Conrad Padojinog. The ceremony took place at the UA&P in Manila.

EMERSA is supported by the DFG’s funding line “Regional Sea Level Change and Society”, and is a collaborative project led by Professors Hornidge (ZMT) and Michael Flitner, Chair of the Sustainability Research Center (artec) University of Bremen, together with core regional partners spanning the Universitas Indonesia, the National University of Singapore, and UA&P.

The project explores how policy interventions and social practices – together with standardized solutions for living with the effects of sea level change in coastal megacities that are often advocated by states, international donors, and civil society organizations – are taken up, contextually translated, politically legitimized and at times re-circulated internationally by local actors.

The signing of the UA&P Cooperation Agreement was planned during a regional scoping study by EMERSA researchers from ZMT and artec, and marks the beginning of the project’s first phase of fieldwork.