8th Annual Council Meeting Summary, 2018
The eighth annual Council Meeting for the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases (GRA) was held 10-11 September in Berlin, Germany. This meeting provided an exciting yet unique opportunity to cooperate and merge various initiatives in the context of sustainable agriculture, climate change, and food security. This meeting saw the handover of Council Chair from Japan to Germany and the acceptance of Indonesia as vice-Chair.
Key outcomes of this meeting included:
- acceptance of two new GRA Flagships, one on Circular Food Systems and the other on Nitrogen;
- agreement for the GRA to support the UNFCCC Koronivia joint work on agriculture; and
- the announcement of several upcoming capability building opportunities supported by the GRA and our partners
This year’s meeting was held alongside the International Conference on Agricultural GHG Emissions and Food Security – Connecting Research to Policy and Practice, jointly organized by the Global Research Alliance (GRA) and the Joint Programming Initiative on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (FACCE-JPI) of the European Commission, in partnership with CGIAR-CCAFS. The conference was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture and supported by its Federal Research Institute for Rural Areas, Forestry and Fisheries (Thünen Institute).
Representatives from 31 member countries that attended the meeting include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Lithuania, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Paraguay, Senegal, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Tunisia, United Kingdom, United States of America, Uruguay, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. Kenya also attended the meeting as an Observer country.
Partner organisations who attended this meeting include the Centre for Research and Education in Tropical Agriculture (CATIE), Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC), Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research (CGIAR), Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Food Security, Agriculture and Climate Change – Joint Programming Initiative (FACCE-JPI), Regional Fund for Agricultural Technology (FONTAGRO), Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), International Soil Reference and Information Centre (ISRIC), World Agricultural Forum (WAF), World Farmers Organisation (WFO). The Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Action (NAMA-Facility) was also invited to present their work at the meeting.
The presentations from this meeting can be downloaded here.
