Interested contributors have until 28 February 2022 to submit abstracts for the IAEA’s International Symposium on Managing Land and Water for Climate-Smart Agriculture, to be held from 25 to 29 July 2022 at IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria.
Agriculture is facing tremendous challenges to meet the rising food demand due to population increase. This challenge is exacerbated by climate change, with more frequent extreme weather events, due to the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) contributing to global warming.
However, agriculture is not just affected by climate change, it is also a major part of the climate problem. It generates about a quarter of the GHG emissions and this is expected to rise further. There is also a need to sustainably manage land and water, increasing their productivity and conserving these natural resources.
Organized in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the symposium will foster the exchange of experiences and anticipated developments of nuclear and related techniques for climate-smart agriculture. It will serve as a platform to highlight new development of nuclear and isotopic techniques, tools and technology packages to build and enhance soil resilience to changing climate, adapt farming practices and improve land and water management for their sustainable productivity. The symposium will also discuss the development of techniques for predicting radionuclide uptake and dynamics for optimizing remediation of radioactively contaminated agricultural land.
“In light of the recent Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report on the rapid, intensified and widespread climate changes affecting every aspect of our life including agriculture, our Symposium becomes all the more important,” said Najat Mokhtar, IAEA Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of Nuclear Sciences and Applications.
“Nuclear techniques have a lot to offer in supporting mitigation and adaptation efforts, namely in climate-smart agriculture, sustainable land-water use, and the environment.”
The conference will bring together leading scientists, academics, experts from research laboratories and representatives of non-governmental and international organizations, as well as donors at the international, regional and national levels to discuss knowledge gaps, research needs and new opportunities to build capacities and worldwide transfer of technologies.
The main topics of the event expected to be covered in the papers include
- Plant nutrition and crop productivity and on-farm ecosystem services;
- Soil conservation, erosion and health, land degradation, biodiversity, crop production;
- Improving water use efficiency, threats/impact to agricultural water quality;
- Climate change and greenhouse gas emissions;
- Tracing pollutants and assessing their threats to crop production and the environment;
- Advances of nuclear-based techniques in soil and water research;
- Integrating nuclear techniques with other advanced methods such as digital technology, geographic information system (GIS), deep learning and modelling techniques.
The IAEA supports countries in the safe and appropriate use of nuclear and related technologies in food and agriculture, aiming to contribute to global food security and sustainable agricultural development worldwide. The Joint FAO/IAEA Centre of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture carries out adaptive research and development at the unique laboratories in Seibersdorf, Austria. The IAEA also runs more than 25 coordinated research projects involving some 400 research institutions and experimental stations and supports capacity building and technology transfer through over 200 national and regional technical cooperation projects.
Follow the Conference on social media with #Atoms4Climate.
Nuclear techniques have a lot to offer in supporting mitigation and adaptation efforts, namely in climate-smart agriculture, sustainable land-water use, and the environment.
