The outreach conference of “Building capacity for adaptation and estimating on GHG emission of agriculture to climate change in China” was held successfully

The outreach conference of building capacity for adaptation and estimating on GHG emission of agriculture to climate change in China was held successfully at Beijing on 21st and 22nd November, 2012. The Experts from University of Reading, Rothamsted Research, University of Aberdeen, Scotland’s Rural College, CABI, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing Agricultural University, Anhui Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Inner Mongolia Academy of Agricultural & Animal Husbandry Sciences and Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, about 30 organizations and 80 participants joined in the conference. Professor Tim Wheeler, Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser for DFID, Shan Mitra, Senior Economics Adviser from DFID China office, Professor Yuelai Lu, Head of Secretariat (UK) for SAIN, Professor Yan’an Tong, Head of Secretariat (China) for SAIN and Xifeng Gong, Deputy Director from Department of International Cooperation, CAAS attended and gave a speech on this conference.

During the conference, participants discussed and communicated warmly on below subjects, such as Estimations on GHG emission in agriculture, GHG mitigation technologies and potential capacity, Climate scenarios and models, agricultural adaptations. Participants also shared the treasured experience on UK-China collaboration and prospected on the next cooperation. All delegates thought, this conference was an important one for SAIN. As a great platform for UK and China cooperation, SAIN has promoted the UK-China sustainable development in agriculture and revealed more research areas and fund sources.

The outputs of this conference are as follows,
1. Appropriate adaptation options identified for building resilience to climate change and promoting sustainable agricultural systems. Both China and UK experts did research on CO2 enrichment effects, plant disease risk under climate change like FEB on wheat and black stem on oilseed, emphasized on the adaptation options in a changing climate.
2. Makes a valuable exploration to develop a marginal abatement cost curve for greenhouse gas emissions from Chinese agriculture.
3. Knowledge gaps in adaptation research in China addressed through focused research projects. Agricultural adaptation and climate scenarios workshops were held for researcher at province and county level, improve their ability to make use of climate information.
4. Capacity of researchers and farming communities strengthened to respond to the impacts of climate change on agriculture. Survey on the climate change knowledge gaps and information sources from different stake holders. Advertise on the adaptation and mitigation strategies based on diverse ways of SAINclimatechange website, mobile phone and FACE.
5. Collaboration on climate change adaptation enhanced between the UK and China.