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Rwanda has been announced as the host of the 6th World Congress on Agroforestry in 2025. The announcement was made during the 5th World Congress on Agroforestry taking place in Quebec, Canada.

The 6th World Congress on Agroforestry in Kigali in 2025 will bring together more than 1,500 delegates including researchers, academia, development partners, and private and public sector to advance agroforestry.

The World Congress on Agroforestry will raise the profile of agroforestry and increase support, engagement and investment. It will create a legacy in terms of partnerships, investments and impact and produce a global agroforestry roadmap.

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Hosted by Mendel University and with the support of the Minister of Agriculture Zdeněk Nekula, the Ministry of the Environment of the Czech Republic, the governor of the South Moravia region and the mayor of the city of Brno, this conference promises to bring together the best and brightest minds in European agroforestry. Don’t miss this opportunity to network with fellow experts and learn about the latest innovations in this important field.

It is our pleasure to announce the 2024 Short Rotation Woody Crops International Conference, to be held May 13 – 16, 2024 in Columbia, Missouri, USA and hosted by the University of Missouri Center for Agroforestry.

Information on abstract submission, registration, and lodging is being compiled and will be made available on a conference website. Stay tuned for more information from the conference organizers!

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With a world population projected to reach 9.8 billion in 2050 – an increase of nearly 30 percent from today’s 7.6 billion [1] – needs for food, fuel, fiber and other bio-based products and services will rise sharply. Demand for forest-based biomass will increase, driven by construction and packaging, and wood fuel will remain the main energy source for many households in emerging economies.

At the same time, climate change, ecosystem degradation and their impacts call for deep changes in our global production and consumption patterns. Societies are engaging in the decarbonization of their economies and the restoration of their environment – with a prominent role for nature-based solutions. Forests and trees are an essential nature-based solution to accelerate the transition towards a carbon-neutral economy by providing opportunities for substituting fossil carbon based and greenhouse gas-intensive products with renewable forest-based products [2].

However, this demand for wood products will have to be met in a context of decreasing forest area, with 420 million hectares of forest lost to deforestation over the past 30 years, mainly in tropical countries (1990 to 2020) [3]. Meeting the rising demand for wood products in a sustainable manner will require a series of complementary actions along the value wood chain. However, these changes will not be sufficient if wood production itself does not increase. Planted forests, defined as forests that at maturity are predominantly composed of trees established through planting and/or deliberate seeding [4] only represent 7 percent of the global forest area [5].

Plantations [6], which make up less than half of the total planted forest area [7], produced in 2012 about 35 percent of the world’s total roundwood [8]. Planted forests hold untapped potential to fulfill future needs in wood products, while mitigating climate change and restoring degraded forest ecosystems. They should become a more important component of sustainably managed and well-developed forest sectors for socio-economic development and environmental protection

This fifth International Congress on Planted Forests will be the opportunity to review and discuss challenges and opportunities in harnessing the potential of planted forests to meet growing human needs, restore forest ecosystems, and mitigate climate change.

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In 2023, two of these entities, the Centre for Forestry Research and Experimentation (CIEF, Generalitat Valenciana) and the Botanical Garden of the University of Valencia (BGUV) are the main responsibles for the organization of this fourth edition, to be held in Valencia (Spain) from 23rd to 27th October 2023, with the close cooperation of several units of the IUCN and the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund.

This congress will be a meeting point where the opinions and experiences of researchers and plant managers or practitioners will converge. This can be done by connecting experts in the fields of plant conservation and ecological restoration, being conscious that the last goal of plant rescue is not possible without the full recovery of the ecological functions on site.

Additionally, the 4th MPCW also pretends to be a forum where experiences from the different sides of the Mediterranean region can meet and establish links for future cooperation projects. Specialists from Southern Europe, the North of Africa, and the Middle East can find here a forum for the conservation of a common natural heritage, including plants, their habitats, and the knowledge on how to manage and use them in a sustainable way.

The 4th MPCW is a window to show research results and experiences in form of oral presentations and posters, not only from the plant or ecological sciences but also about the relationships between the public and the plant conservation world (citizen science, ethnobotany, local involvement, bottom-up initiatives, landraces, etc.), opening a new paradigm for the next decades around the Mediterranean: The plants are for the people, but with the people.

Please take a closer look at the 4th MPCW webpage and think about the possibilities of contributing to the huge effort of the conservation and recovery of plant richness and its sustainable use in the Mediterranean.

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We are very pleased to invite you to join us at the International Conference “Closed cycles and the Circular Society 2023: The power of ecological engineering” of the International Ecological Engineering Society (IEES). The conference will be held between October 1st – 5th, 2023 in Platanias – Chania on the island of Crete, Greece with physical presence and is organised by the Laboratory of Environmental Engineering and Management of the Technical University of Crete.
This conference marks the 30th anniversary since the foundation of the IEES in 1993! In this frame, our aim is to deliver and spread the message of redefining the ecological engineering discipline and communicate the IEES’s vision of an ecology-inspired circular engineering, as declared in our Manifesto of Ecological Engineering. An extended spectrum of conference topics has been formed indicating this modern holistic approach of Ecological Engineering.

The general conference topics are the
i) Use of ecological elements and ecosystems to reduce pollution
ii) Use of ecosystems in a circular society
iii) Circular design and integrated planning approaches for increased resiliency
iv) Resource recovery and reuse
v) Climate change, green and just transition, and carbon neutrality: the role of ecological engineers
vi) Regenerative agriculture
vii) Ecological Engineering and the mining industry
viii) Ecological Engineering Education

The official working language for the conference is English.

There will be oral and flash oral presentations and poster sessions.

We are looking forward to seeing you in Chania!

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Date and time
28th September 2023, from 9.30am to 10.15 am (CET)

Language
Inglese

Presentation available here

Executive summary Inglese

Overview:
At the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania (MAICh) in Crete, Greece, a hypoxia workstation is being used as part of the LIVINGAGRO project in an innovative way: the hypoxylab system allows us to determine how plants respond to low oxygen and then select species that might exhibit higher growth rates and eventually produce more forage. Based on the concept that plants adapted to a high altitude are likely to grow faster under normoxic oxygen concentrations, experiments were performed using the hypoxylab system. The objective is to identify species which produce more forage for grazing animals in Lebanon and Jordan through a combination of germplasm testing and selection.

AGENDA

Brief introduction to the LIVINGAGRO project
The workshop will focus on

1. How the hypoxia workstation operates
2. The science behind the effect of oxygen
3. Results of experiments to date
4. The potential significance of this service

Q&A, Open discussion between speaker and participants

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

After earning a PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of Maryland – College Park, USA and working at the US Department of Agriculture, Panagiotis Kalaitzis founded the Department of Horticultural Genetics and Biotechnology at the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania (CIHEAM – MAICh). Continuing as the department’s Director of Research and Studies since then, Dr. Kalaitzis has participated in numerous European and nationally funded scientific projects, coordinating several of them and overseeing MAICh’s work with LIVINGAGRO. He is also the director of the Molecular Biology and Biotechnology Laboratory at MAICh, where his research includes DNA-based olive oil authentication to certify olive variety, and the characterization of olive genetic resources to determine the varieties that are most resilient in the face of climate change.

Contact and organization

Lisa Radinovsky radino68@gmail.com; Panagiotis Kalaitzis panagiot@maich.gr

Project Contacts
Fo.Re.S.T.A.S. (LIVINGAGRO Leading Partner). Viale Luigi Merello, 86 • 09123 Cagliari, Italy. Tel. +39 070 279 91 • livingagro.project@forestas.it
Project’s ICT platform: https://www.livingagrolab.eu  / FB: www.facebook.com/Livingagro / LIn: www.linkedin.com/company/livingagro-eni-cbc-med-project

The 9th Forum Agroforestry Systems will take place from 27-28.09.2023 in Freiburg.
The Forum Agroforestry Systems is an event for the exchange of science and practice on agroforestry that has been taking place since 2009. Next year, DeFAF is co-hosting the forum with the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg. With various field trip opportunities on Sept. 27 and the main conference day for technical papers and discussions on Sept. 28, there will be something for everyone interested in agroforestry. For further information check the DeFAF website.

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Conferenza

ALL-Ready and AE4EU jointly host their final project conference at the European Committee of the Regions in Brussels on 27 September 2023.

The one-day conference will shed light on how the two projects paved the way for a European Network of Living Labs and Research Infrastructures. Both projects will feature stories from the field, pilot networks, and local stakeholders. Experiences from involved Living Labs and Research Infrastructures will give practical insights.

Through a series of panel discussions, the event will explore how Living Labs and Research Infrastructures can support the agroecology transition. How can Agroecology Living Labs and Research Infrastructures translate theory into practice? This and related questions will be at the forefront of participatory discussions to understand lessons learned from three years of project work.

The closing session will focus on how regions can best support Living Labs and Research Infrastructures to drive the agroecology and urban transitions. The role of the Common Agriculture Policy network, local authorities, and the future European partnership “Accelerating farming systems transition: agroecology living labs and research infrastructures” will be given prime consideration. Join us to meet partners and stakeholders from all across Europe and get to know their work on the field towards the agroecology transition!

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https://efi.int/events/2023-annual-conference-2023-09-20: stock.adobe.com – Nikolai Sorokin

EFI 2023 Annual Conference will take place on 20-22 September in Novi Sad, Serbia. Conference will be organised together with our member organisation Institute of Lowland Forestry and Environment.

Scientific seminar on ‘European forests and forest science: transition to the future’ will celebrate EFI’s 30th Anniversary.

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