On 30 August, CATIE (Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza), represented by Muhammad Ibrahim, its Director General, signed a contract with the New Zealand Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), to put in place the implementation of the Platform for Sustainable Livestock Production: more productivity with fewer greenhouse gas emissions, which will work in the Latin American and Caribbean region.
The Platform is coordinated by CATIE, in collaboration with the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases’ Livestock Research Group and the Latin American Regional Fund for Agricultural Technology (FONTAGRO), and will look to establish alliances with key audiences for the sustainable intensification of livestock production systems, as a regional research and development strategy for climate change adaptation and mitigation.
A new $400,000 scholarship programme to build global expertise on climate change, agriculture and food security will boost New Zealand’s contribution to agricultural greenhouse gas research say Climate Change Minister Paula Bennett and Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy.
The scholarship was announced on 29 August 2017 at the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases (GRA) Council meeting in Tsukuba, Japan, and is a joint initiative of the GRA and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.
New Zealand funding support will enable up to 40 recipients to be hosted in research centres of GRA partners and member countries over the next three years. New Zealand has been a long standing donor of the CGIAR, most recently committing a further $11 million over two years to its network of research institutes around the world.
Find out about the 2017 Global Research Alliance Council Meeting
The Conservation Agriculture Network of our Croplands Research Group. led by Canada, has produced a new brochure of their work.
The brochure explains how conservation agriculture can mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and enhance soil carbon storage in croplands.
Click here to read the brochure
A number of opportunities are currently available for research and officer positions with the United Nations’ Capital Development Fund (UNCDF).
The UN Capital Development Fund makes public and private finance work for the poor in the world’s 47 least developed countries (LDCs). With its capital mandate and instruments, UNCDF offers “last mile” finance models that unlock public and private resources, especially at the domestic level, in support of households, localities and small enterprises that are underserved, where development needs are greatest and where resources are scarcest.
The July 2017 edition of the Global Research Alliance’s Livestock Research Group newsletter is now available.
This edition includes updates on the four flagship programmes of the Alliance and a summary of outcomes of the April 2017 Livestock Research Group meeting in Washington DC.
Our side event from the FAO Conference 40th Session “Partnering to Scale up Climate Action by Countries in the Agricultural Sectors” is now available as a video to watch on demand.
The side event was jointly organised by the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases (GRA), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as host of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) and FAO. The Speakers from FAO and GRA partner organisations and Member countries discuss in particular the role of strategic partnerships in maximizing its impact on the ground through support to countries to implement the agriculture commitments of their NDCs.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) – through its Co-operative Research Programme (CRP) – has opened a call for applications to fund travelling research fellowships and to sponsor international conferences (such as workshops, congresses and symposia) on cutting edge issues in agriculture, food, fisheries and forestry in 2018. The CRP operates under three themes – Managing Natural Capital for the Future, Managing Risks in a Connected World, Transformational Technologies and Innovation. More information, including full details of the application process and selection criteria for both the fellowships and conference support, is available on the website: www.oecd.org/agriculture/crp
The July edition of the FACCE-SURPLUS Newsletter is now available.
The Global Research Alliance is delighted to announce our newest Member country, Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is the fifth African country to join the Alliance.
Zimbabwe recognises that membership in the Alliance can help the country realise its food security issues and its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) targets, enshrined in the Paris Agreement.
The 48 member countries now participating in the activities of the Global Research Alliance are Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Honduras, Indonesia, Italy, Ireland, Japan, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Nicaragua, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Republic of Korea, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the United Kingdom, Tunisia, the United States, Uruguay, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.
For more information on the GRA or how to become a member country please contact the GRA Secretariat.
The Global Research Alliance has updated its website to include individual pages for the Networks associated with each Research Group. We’ve also freshened up the visuals on the site, created a searchable library, and made space for special highlights of our work. Sample the Livestock Research Group page
Ten research projects on monitoring and mitigating greenhouse gases from agri- and silvi-culture have been selected to receive funding from the FACCE ERA-GAS Co-fund. The projects fall within the scientific scope of the call for proposals, which is divided in the following four research themes:
1) Improving national GHG inventories and monitoring, reporting, and verification of emissions
2) Refining and facilitating the implementation of GHG mitigation technologies
3) State-of-the-art production systems that are profitable and improve food and forest biomass production while reducing GHG emissions
4) Assessment of policy and economic measures to support emissions reductions across the farm-to- fork and forest-to consumer chain
On 4 March 2016 FACCE ERA-GAS launched this co-funded call for transnational research projects on monitoring and mitigation of greenhouse gases from agri- and silvi-culture, in Europe and New Zealand. The call closed on 19 December 2016. In May 2017, following peer review evaluation by a panel of international experts, ten projects were selected. The projects will receive funding from partners from 13 European countries and New-Zealand, with co-funding from the European Commission. The total requested funding is 14.123.000 euro. The evaluation outcomes have been communicated to the project coordinators on 18 May 2017. The projects are expected to start from August 2017.
Read more about the selected projects
The Forum of the Future is organising a Feed Compass for the Protein Challenge 2040. A multi-stakeholder group is creating a set of criteria and an easy-to-use tool to help compare different types of feed, with the long-term goals of helping to produce sustainable feed, future-proof value chains, and ensure food security.
https://medium.com/@FuturesCentre/which-animal-feeds-are-fit-for-the-future-881c293cb9b
The Compass will build from current work done in the feed space, including the LEAP Feed Guidelines, and will involve organisations such as the Ahold Delhaize, Calysta, Evonik, Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO), FEFAC, Forum for the Future, Volac, Waitrose, and WWF-US.
For more information about this initiative, please contact [email protected]
