Agricultural research and climate change: European networks get their act together
18/01/2010 - Press release
The international conference on "Dialogue between Europe and its Southern Partners on Agricultural Research and Climate Change", which was held in Brussels on 16-17 December 2009, was one of the positive events of the Copenhagen Summit agenda. The European networks agricultural research networks have made concrete progress towards defining Europe's contribution to climate change for the mutual benefit of Europe and its southern partners.
A common approach to agricultural research and climate change
The conference was organized, for the first time, as a joint event, by the main three networks coordinating national agricultural research programmes under the aegis of the European Commission:
• SCAR (Standing Committee on Agricultural Research)
• EIARD (European Initiative for Agricultural Research for Development)
• ERA-ARD (Agricultural Research for Development dimension of the European Research Area).
CIRAD (the French agricultural research centre for international development), which coordinates ERA-ARD, was also heavily involved in the preparations for the event.
The 140 participants (40 of whom were representatives of southern research centres and political organizations) discussed the current situation and defined priorities for scientific research, partnerships and policies in order to address the consequences of climate change for agriculture. In addition, they unanimously recognized that this should be the main priority for agricultural research for the near future.
The conference allowed participants to take into account the partners’ priorities in the scientific content of Europe’s Joint Programming Initiative on "Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change", approved by the European Union on 3 December 2009. Participants also stressed the importance of mobilizing national, regional and international scientific partners, in particular the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research’s Alliance of Centres, for the establishment of this programme.
Coordinating the initiatives
The workshops for each major region demonstrated not only the diversity of expectations from the South, but also the research potential for managing this diversity, on condition that such research is multi-disciplinary and inclusive and that it has strong political support.
The necessity of coordinating these initiatives and encouraging synergies, notably through agricultural research consortiums, is of prime importance in advising politicians, who have a fundamental role to play in taking up the challenge of climate change. The tasks that must now be tackled are the definition of methods of governance and the mobilization of political and financial support.
- Category: Institutional