50th IAH Worldwide Groundwater Congress: “Groundwater: A matter of scale”, Cape Town, South Africa
After 20 years, the IAH Worldwide Groundwater Congress is back to Cape Town, South Africa. After some years, our network is back to action at IAH congresses. We met and socialized with early career hydrogeologists, especially from the southern emisphere: new eary careers joined the network thanks to the social event and the annual general meeting, and for the fifth time an early career was invited as a keynote speaker.
Annual General Meeting
The Annual General Meeting took place on Thursday, September 21st, with the participation of about 35 attendees. This meeting was the first one after the long break due to travel restrictions after the COVID pandemic. The meeting was an opportunity to present the different programmes maintained by the ECHN, the collaboration with other youth organizations (as the UNESCO Groundwater Youth Network), the funding opportunities to attend IAH Congresses, and the support for the creation of an ECHN National Branch. It created a propitious moment to share opinions and concerns regarding job opportunities for early careers in different countries, and early careers perspective respective to IAH.
We gathered new members joining the Steering Committee, Alina Kadhila (Namibia), Igor Karlović (Croatia), Brian Murove (Zimbabwe), Stéphanie Musy (Switzerland), Aqeela Parker (South Africa), Ashwani Kumar Tiwari (India), Eileen Villaseñor (UK), as part of the task team. Isadora Kuhn (Brazil), as co-chair, and Klara Zagar (Slovenia), as part of the task team, are the new rectruits that joined the Steering Committee in 2023.
Social Function
ECHN animated the Congress icebreaker event held at the congress venue on Tuesday September 19th. It started with a welcome from past ECHN chairs and co-chairs (Viviana Re and Matthys Dippenaar). Then the icebreaker event involved the early careers in a classical network game: “Hydrobingo”, that consisted in a game where each ECH had to ask specific questions (e.g., related to groundwater, the scientific background, personal aspects of their life) to other attendees, and the objective was to fulfil the characteristic table with names of other participants.
ECH Keynote
The 5th edition of an ECH keynote lecture took place in the closing ceremony, on Friday, September 22nd. The keynote speaker was invited by the Local Organising Committee with the support of ECHN. This year, Awonda Magingi (South Africa) presented a keynote lecture entitled: “Research and implementation of managed aquifer recharge in a changing climate”.
