Workshop 3.1
Convenors
Julie Ingram, Countryside and Community Research Institute, Gloucester, UK
Sandra Nauman, Ecologic Institute, Berlin, Germany
Jan Verhagen, Plant Research International, Wageningen University, Netherlands
If you have any questions regarding this workshop, please turn directly to the convenors by sending an email.
Abstract
This workshop aims to bring together researchers to share experiences in two main areas: • Understanding opportunities for and constraints to implementing soil management that enhances mitigation and adaptation (at the farm, the institutional and the policy levels) • Enabling and supporting soil management for mitigation and adaptation with facilitation, advice, decision support and policy measures.
Description
Soils provide the most indispensable function of supporting the production of plants, thereby, satisfying a wide range of needs, including food, feed, fibre and energy for a growing human population. At the same time they provide a range of regulating and supporting functions related to climate change and removal of greenhouse gases. At the farm level soil health is central to farm resilience and to its economic performance Identifying and implementing effective soil management measures at farm level to enable adaptation and mitigation is a clear challenge. Equally understanding how such measures can be integrated into farming systems requires examination of a complex set of interacting factors. With respect to soil management for adaptation and mitigation these include: knowledge, perceptions and behaviours held in the farming community; farmer initiated adaptations and innovations for resilient farming systems; as well as opportunities for and constraints to implementing measures (at the farm, the institutional and the policy level). Furthermore identifying promising activities in the knowledge and innovation system that enable on farm innovation, adaptation and mitigation through facilitation, advice (extension), decision support, and policy measures is key to advancing good practice in soil management with respect to climate change. Enabling effective knowledge management and strengthening capacity is also seen as important in making the knowledge and innovation system ‘fit for purpose’ with respect to meeting the challenges of climate change. This workshop aims to bring together researchers to share experiences of climate change in all these areas of research but with particular emphasis on: • Understanding opportunities for and constraints to implementing soil management that enhances mitigation and adaptation (at the farm, the institutional and the policy levels) • Enabling and supporting soil management for mitigation and adaptation with facilitation, advice, decision support and policy measures. These issues will be addressed in presentation and interactive working groups in the workshop. Two on-going European Commission-funded FP7 Research projects have been dealing with these topics over the past two years: SmartSOIL (www.smartsoil.eu) and Catch C (http://www.catch-c.eu/). Together they have explored several questions around the theme of how best to facilitate soil carbon management for adaptation and mitigation on farm. In this working group we are seeking to enrich and expand the research with results from other studies that have dealt with similar questions in the context of climate change. Papers are invited that describe empirical research from all types of farming systems.
Workshop process
Oral presentations and posters are proposed. Interactive short oral paper session: 4-6 presentations (each ca. 8 minutes) each with a short discussion. This will then result in 4-6 different topics to be discussed in an interactive roundtable discussion/world cafe among presenters and the audience. This will take place in rotation, followed by a plenary session.
