Climate-Smart Agriculture

From fundamentals to application

TO BE ANNOUNCED

Scope

Agriculture and climate change are closely interrelated: climate is a main determinant of agricultural production while agriculture is responsible for approximately one third of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an increasingly appreciated approach that aims at ensuring food security, while lowering greenhouse gas emissions, and increasing the resilience of agricultural systems to climate change. CSA is facing various challenges that could hamper its implementation including its scope and meaning, enhancing synergies and reducing trade-offs, the identification of climate smart practices, the realization of a conducive policy environment, and the design and implementation of context-specific solutions.

This course addresses the interlinked challenges of agriculture and climate change in a holistic manner approaching CSA from various perspectives including animal & plant sciences, politics & governance, and business & finance in an interdisciplinary manner. It will provide participants with an overview of the up-to-date knowledge about CSA, demonstrate the opportunities, challenges and trade-offs. It will provide ample opportunities to network with experts and fellow candidates from around the world in the field of CSA. 

Programme

The course is composed of a series of lectures, subsequent discussions, a poster session and group work activities.

1. Lectures and Discussion: After each lecture (35 minutes) a discussion of 30 minutes is held. The discussion is led by about 3 participants who promote an interactive dialogue with the speaker and the audience, and challenge the speaker on the presentation and raise relevant questions from the mandatory readings of the day, as appropriate. Prior to the course, participants are asked to indicate after which speaker they want to convene the discussion. Accordingly, participants are assigned to a convener group and they receive the relevant literature of that speaker.
2. Poster Session: After the opening session on Sunday afternoon there will be a poster session consisting of a set of parallel running poster presentations. For the poster session participants must prepare a poster specifically for the course.
3. Group work activities: In the afternoon (Monday-Thursday) working groups (4-6 persons per group) will envision future development in Climate Smart Agriculture from an interdisciplinary perspective, identifying key fundamental issues to be addressed and how fundamental knowledge and scientific insights from various disciplines can be combined and translated into societal accepted and economic viable application. The output of the group work will be a document (3-5 pages) which will be presented on the Friday morning.

General information

Course Organisers

• Claudius van de Vijver (PE&RC)
• Madeleine van Mansfeld - Central Facilitator (Regional development and spatial use)
• Robbert Biesbroek (Public Administration and Policy)
• Marijn Faling (Public Administration and Policy)
• Cinthia Soto Golcher (Forest and Nature Conservation)
• Thomas Long (Management Studies)
• Corina van Middelaar (Animal Production Systems)
• Katrien Descheemaeker (Plant Production Systems)
• Neil Prota (Management Studies)

More information

Dr. Claudius van de Vijver (PE&RC)
Phone: +31 (0) 317 485116
Email: claudius.vandevijver@wur.nl

Registration of interest

At this moment, this course is not scheduled yet. However, if you register your interest in this activity below, we will inform you as soon as the course is scheduled and registration of participation is opened.