China and UK strengthen partnership on sustainable agriculture

On 10 November, Hilary Benn, UK Environment Secretary, met the Chinese Agriculture Minister, Sun Zhengcai and signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Cooperation on Sustainable Agriculture.
The Ministers also launched the Sustainable Agriculture Innovation Network (SAIN) which will help address the link between agriculture and climate change.  This new network will provide a clear plan for the development and implementation of China-UK collaboration on environmentally sustainable agriculture.

Launching SAIN, Hilary Benn said:

 “We want to work with China to promote sustainable agriculture.  This network will enable us to do this.  It will help us to learn from each other and share expertise so that we are more resource and carbon efficient and reduce our impact on the environment. 

 “This will be important not only for China and the UK, but for the world as a whole as we face the challenge of increasing food production in an environmentally sustainable way at a time of growing impacts of climate change.

Chinese Minister of Agriculture Sun Zhengcai said:

 “With the accelerated development of the economic globalisation process, a series of important issues such as food security, climate change, food safety, environmental pollution, invasive alien species and biodiversity, have become the common global issues of concern.

 “It is my hope that our two countries will make good use of this platform of SAIN so that we can follow the sustainable development concept, create new cooperative models and carry out cooperation in the areas of food security, environmental protection, climate change and the use of renewable energy in order to make our contribution to sustainable development in our two countries and elsewhere in the world.”

SAIN will help deliver the MoU and the Agriculture and Fisheries Work Programme of the UK-China Sustainable Development Dialogue.