Addressing the Global Emergency of Climate Change and Environmental Pollution

Themes

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Symposium objectives

The overarching themes of the symposium focus on ‘Bridging Science to Action’ by translating research into practical strategies for various stakeholders (e.g. farmers, advisors, academics, researchers, students and policymakers). This is achieved through integrated approaches, emphasising synergy across disciplines and scales associated with agricultural systems. The conference highlights innovation and technology, showcasing cutting-edge solutions for mitigating climate change, addressing adaptation constraints, and reducing environmental pollution. The approach addresses equity and inclusivity, covering all socio-economic dimensions of climate change and equitable access to solutions. A strong emphasis is placed on ecosystem services for resilience, recognising the indispensable role of healthy, productive and diverse ecosystems in supporting sustainable agriculture. The key aspects include (but are not limited to):

  • The development of integrated environmental solutions by addressing interconnected challenges with holistic strategies to achieve carbon-neutral farming.
  • The promotion of ecological resilience and sustainability by preserving agro-biodiversity and building adaptable, productive farming systems.
  • The creation of decision-support tools for informed, sustainable land use planning.
  • The identification of viable, socially accepted, and innovative options aligned with the circular bioeconomy and stakeholder needs.
  • The advancement of research to support evidence-based climate policies and their effective implementation.

The conference aims to explore and develop innovative strategies that strike a balance between reducing environmental footprints and promoting sustainable agricultural systems in the face of climate change, ultimately generating actionable insights and solutions. The key sessions to submit abstracts for oral, PICO, and poster presentations are as follows:

Themes include:

Sustainable Crop Management Practices

Cropping systems can lead to soil degradation, biodiversity loss, pollution from agrochemicals, and increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions due to poor land management and inappropriate farming practices. This session explores innovative practices crucial for mitigating climate change and ensuring long-term food security. The adoption of strategies such as conservation agriculture, which promotes minimal soil disturbance and residue retention, will be a key factor in enhancing soil health and carbon sequestration.

Among others, for example, Precision and Regenerative Agriculture, utilising data-driven techniques, will be discussed for optimising resource use and minimising environmental impact. It will also highlight the benefits of diversified cropping systems and intercropping in reducing GHG emissions and offsetting. through carbon sequestration, while improving biodiversity. By fostering healthy soils, reducing dependence on synthetic inputs, and enhancing ecosystem services, these solutions will not only mitigate agriculture’s contribution to climate change but also ensure stable and sustainable food production for a growing global population under increasingly unpredictable environmental conditions. The session will focus on research into solutions for air, water, and soil pollution, primarily in arable cropping systems.

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Climate-Resilient Grassland Systems

Livestock grazing, along with fertiliser management, significantly affects soil health and contributes to agricultural GHG emissions and pollution through leaching, volatilisation, and runoff. With livestock accounting for about half of anthropogenic emissions, especially methane, projected increases in livestock numbers could raise manure production and methane emissions by around 60% by 2030. Sustainable grassland management is essential to reduce environmental pressures, requiring careful control of livestock numbers and fertiliser use.

This session explores strategies for maintaining productive and sustainable grasslands (e.g. pastures, hay and silage), which dominate the total global agricultural area, and their interaction with a changing climate. Strategies to enhance grassland resilience, such as adaptive grazing, rotational systems, and diverse forages, while examining both traditional livestock systems and non-livestock approaches for improving carbon storage, water retention, biodiversity, and overall ecosystem services, will be explored. There will be a focus on solutions to coupled air, water and soil pollution, in both grazed and ungrazed grassland systems for long-term food, fibre, and ecological stability.

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Genetic Innovations for Climate Resilience

This session focuses on cutting-edge advances in plant and animal breeding that will be needed for global food security under a changing climate. We will delve into how genetic selection and engineering are developing climate-resilient crop varieties and livestock breeds. Solutions include enhancing tolerance to abiotic stresses like drought, heat, and salinity; improving nutrient use efficiency to reduce fertiliser-related GHG emissions; and breeding animals with lower enteric methane emissions.

Directly addressing agriculture’s dual role as both a contributor to and a victim of climate change will be an important consideration. By integrating genetic innovations with sustainable on-farm practices, we can foster systems that not only adapt to unpredictable conditions but actively mitigate GHG emissions, ensuring robust, environmentally sound, and productive agriculture for future generations.

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Agroforestry Systems for Ecosystem Services

Mixed farming systems are very popular in both developed and developing nations. This session investigates the potential synergy of integrating trees and diverse ecological elements into agricultural landscapes. We will examine various agroforestry practices, including silvoarable (trees with crops), silvopastoral (trees with grass + livestock), hedgerows/shelterbelts, farm gardens, and orchards. These systems offer multifaceted benefits, particularly for degraded agricultural lands, by enhancing climate change mitigation through increased carbon sequestration in biomass and soils and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They also support climate adaptation by providing shade, reducing wind erosion, improving water retention and nutrient cycling, and lowering methane production.

By merging productive agriculture with ecological restoration, agroforestry offers a holistic solution to environmental challenges, ensuring long-term sustainability, enhanced ecosystem services, and improved livelihoods, contributing to the global demand for food, meat and milk, under a changing climate. This session will focus on identifying technologies and approaches to reduce GHGs and pollution, emphasising the crucial role of applied research and how the integration of livestock can enhance system flexibility with added environmental benefits.

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Biodiversity Conservation & Restoration

This session explores the strategies for safeguarding and revitalising Earth’s biological wealth, with an emphasis on agricultural landscapes. We examine how conserving and actively restoring biodiversity across terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems directly underpins their productivity and resilience. This includes fostering genetic diversity in wild and cultivated species, restoring degraded habitats, and promoting ecological connectivity.

Biodiversity provides indispensable ecosystem services, from pollination and pest control to water purification and soil fertility, all of which are important for sustainable food production and human well-being. Under a changing climate, robust biodiversity measures can enhance ecosystem adaptability, offering natural solutions for carbon sequestration, GHG mitigation and environmental pollution reduction, and act as a buffer against extreme events. The solutions discussed will emphasise the integration of conservation practices with productive land-use benefits, ensuring ecosystems can continue to provide essential services and contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation.

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Land Health for Climate Resilience

Land health is essential because it directly underpins ecosystem services, biodiversity, and human well-being by providing the foundation for food production, clean water supplies, and stable environmental conditions. This session explores the foundational role of healthy soils and sustainable land management in addressing climate change. It will assess the critical functions for healthy land, including its capacity for carbon capture in both biomass and soil, efficient nutrient cycling, and water retention, as a cornerstone of natural solutions.

Discussions will focus on practices that improve soil organic matter, reduce erosion, and enhance microbial activity, directly contributing to climate change mitigation by reducing GHG emissions and increasing carbon sequestration. By prioritising land health, this session will foster the development of more resilient ecosystems, enhance soil health and biodiversity, and contribute to sustainable livelihoods, ultimately building a more adaptive and carbon-neutral future.

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Water Management for a Resilient Future

Understanding hydrological pathways, how water moves through the agricultural landscape via infiltration, runoff, and evapotranspiration, is key to effective water and environmental management. This session focuses on hydrology and water management strategies in agriculture, crucial for enhancing food security in a changing climate. We will explore how to optimise water use to boost crop yields, conserve precious resources, and improve soil health. Given increasingly unpredictable weather patterns and growing water stress, the session will delve into innovative solutions. Topics include precision irrigation, rainwater harvesting, and efficient drainage systems that minimise water loss and control water flow.

This session will also discuss the selection of drought- or flood-tolerant crops to build agricultural resilience. Furthermore, the session will address minimising water-related GHG emissions (e.g., from pumping), preventing nutrient runoff and pollution into surface and groundwater bodies by managing pathways, and ultimately fostering climate-adaptive and environmentally responsible farming systems for enhanced productivity and ecological health. By integrating a deep understanding of hydrological processes with cutting-edge management techniques, we can build more resilient and sustainable agricultural landscapes.

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Integrated Pest & Disease Management

The significance of IPDM is likely to intensify with climate change, as altered temperature and precipitation regimes influence pest life cycles, their geographic distribution, and disease prevalence. By fostering resilient agroecosystems through integrated strategies, we can mitigate yield losses, protect biodiversity, and ensure food security, all while adapting to new pest pressures and safeguarding the long-term health of agricultural systems.

Solutions include enhancing beneficial insect populations, utilising resistant crop varieties, implementing precise monitoring and forecasting approaches, and the deployment of biological control measures. This session addresses the need for adaptable strategies in confronting the impacts of agricultural pests and diseases amidst shifting climate patterns. It will explore innovative, ecologically sound approaches that minimise reliance on synthetic inputs, thereby reducing GHG and environmental pollution to soil and water bodies.

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Climate Risks & Vulnerability Across Agri-Systems

The significance of Climate Risks and Vulnerability lies in anticipating and preparing for the socio-economic impacts of climate change, including food insecurity, livelihood disruption, and migration. Solutions will emphasise data-driven risk assessments, targeted adaptation strategies, and policy frameworks that build resilience within vulnerable communities, ensuring equitable and sustainable agricultural development in the face of a rapidly changing climate.

Understanding the specific climate challenges and their diverse impacts on various agricultural sectors and communities will be an important goal. This session will examine regional climate projections to identify critical threats, such as altered rainfall patterns, increased extreme weather events, and rising temperatures. It will assess the vulnerability of different Agri-systems, from crop production to livestock and aquatic farming, considering their exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity.

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Early Warning Systems & Climate Risk Mapping

This session focuses on leveraging advanced technologies and robust frameworks to predict climate events and deliver actionable information to farmers and stakeholders. It will explore the development and deployment of systems that forecast droughts, floods, heatwaves, and pest outbreaks, enabling proactive decision-making.

Discussions will cover integrating satellite imagery, climate models, and local data to create high-resolution climate risk maps, identifying vulnerable areas and alternative land use and management options.Empowering agricultural communities with timely, localised insights for enhanced climate change mitigation and adaptation will be essential. By providing clear guidance on resilient cropping strategies, water management, and diversified land use, these systems can reduce economic losses, enhance food security, and build the adaptive capacity necessary to thrive in an increasingly uncertain climate.

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Geospatial Technologies for Climate-Smart Agriculture

This session will explore the transformative power of spatial technologies in tackling climate change challenges within agriculture. We will delve into how remote sensing (from satellites to drones), combined with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and geospatial analytics, provides precise, timely insights for monitoring, mapping, and analysing crucial agri-environmental data. Key applications to be discussed include assessing land use changes, crop health, water availability, and soil health.

The session will also cover the use of Lidar for detailed topographic mapping, and how these technologies enable the early detection of land degradation and its conservation and restoration. Furthermore, the session will highlight their role in quantifying biomass, carbon sequestration potential, and GHG emissions at various scales, including farm-level benchmarking. The session will showcase how these insights optimise resource allocation, guide targeted mitigation and adaptation strategies, and support data-driven policy decisions for a more resilient and sustainable agricultural future.

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Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture

Join us for an insightful session delving into the transformative power of AI and ML in modern agriculture. We will explore cutting-edge applications that are revolutionising farming practices, from predictive analytics for optimising crop yields and precision irrigation to automated pest and disease detection. Our expert speakers, drawn from both agricultural science and AI technology, will showcase real-world case studies where data-driven models have significantly enhanced productivity, promoted sustainability, and improved decision-making across the agricultural value chain.

The participants will gain a comprehensive understanding of how technologies like satellite imagery, IoT sensors, and advanced machine learning algorithms are seamlessly integrated into intelligent farming systems. Beyond the innovations, this session will also address critical challenges, including data privacy, ensuring technology access in rural communities, and navigating the ethical considerations of AI’s role in our food systems. This session is designed for agritech professionals, researchers, policymakers, and technology developers keen on fostering cross-sector collaboration and innovation. Discover how AI is not merely transforming agriculture; it’s actively feeding the future of our planet.

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Farm Modelling & Decision Support Systems

Join us for an insightful session exploring the transformative role of advanced modelling and decision support systems (DSS) in revolutionising agricultural planning and operations. As agro-ecosystems grow increasingly complex, tools that simulate and analyse entire farm systems are becoming indispensable for truly data-driven decision-making. We will delve into process-based models, understanding how they simulate crucial biological and physical processes like crop growth, water balance, and nutrient cycling.

The participants will see how these models support precision in planning by accurately replicating real-world dynamics under diverse environmental and management conditions. The session will also highlight whole-farm models, which integrate financial, labour, environmental, and production data to provide a comprehensive assessment of trade-offs and outcomes across the entire farming operation. Furthermore, we’ll present system models to illustrate broader applications, linking individual farms to markets, policies, and regional resources. Through real-world case studies, we will demonstrate how these powerful models, when integrated into DSS platforms, significantly enhance our understanding and their application for climate-resilient agri-environmental systems. This session is ideal for researchers, agronomists, tech developers, and policy stakeholders committed to elevating decision-making in agriculture through sophisticated modelling and integrated systems thinking.

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Policy & Finance for Resilient Agri-systems

This session explores the crucial policy frameworks and financial mechanisms needed to strengthen adaptive capacity and resilience in rural communities. We will examine the essential elements for ensuring equitable access to resources, knowledge, and financial support, enabling agriculture to effectively adapt to and mitigate climate change. Discussions will delve into national and international policies, including carbon pricing, subsidies for sustainable practices, and relevant international agreements that foster climate-resilient agriculture. The sessions will also explore the role of Green Finance and specific agricultural schemes (e.g., CAP) and incentives in driving sustainable transitions.

Solutions will include participatory governance models, strengthening extension services, promoting climate-smart agricultural policies, and fostering cross-sectoral collaboration. A key focus will be on empowering farmers and rural populations to respond to climate risks, secure livelihoods, and contribute to global GHG reduction targets. This session will also consider mechanisms for reducing agriculture’s carbon footprint through renewable and bioenergy integration, agroforestry, and promoting circularity within farm systems. This session aims to identify actionable strategies for fostering robust and sustainable agri-systems.

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Circular Agriculture & Bioeconomy

This session dives into the powerful intersection of circularity in agricultural systems and the burgeoning bioeconomy, showcasing how these concepts drive sustainability, innovation, and resilience in food and farming. Circular agriculture focuses on minimising waste and reusing resources, effectively closing nutrient and energy loops. When paired with bioeconomy principles, which champion the use of renewable biological resources for food, materials, energy, and chemicals, it empowers farmers and agribusinesses to create high-value, low-impact production systems. Our experts will share real-world examples of transforming agricultural by-products into valuable resources like bioplastics, biofertilizers, and bioenergy. This not only reduces reliance on fossil-based inputs but also generates new revenue streams.

The session will also explore the policies and digital tools that support circular design across agro-food chains. Participants will discover how circular practices boost soil health, water efficiency, and biodiversity, while also contributing to climate mitigation and rural economic development. From livestock manure valorisation to crop residue upcycling, this session demonstrates the business case and environmental gains of embracing circular, bio-based models. Designed for farmers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and policymakers, this session encourages a forward-thinking approach to agricultural sustainability and economic opportunity through circularity and bio-based innovation.

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Indigenous Knowledge for Climate Resilience

Integrating context-specific, often effective, traditional strategies with scientific approaches is becoming increasingly important as a basis for sustainable agricultural development. Practical solutions include documenting and revitalising traditional farming techniques, crop varieties, and water management practices that build resilience to changing climate patterns. This session highlights the importance of recognising and integrating traditional ecological knowledge and community-led solutions for a wider climate-resilient agriculture.

The session will explore how centuries of observation and adaptation have endowed indigenous communities with invaluable insights into sustainable land management, biodiversity conservation, and the approaches for coping with environmental variability. By fostering collaborative partnerships, this session aims to empower local communities, enhance local adaptive capacity, and contribute to holistic, culturally appropriate climate mitigation and adaptation strategies, ensuring food security and sustainable livelihoods in a changing world.

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Low-Carbon Agri-Food Systems

This session focuses on sustainable energy and post-harvest innovations as critical levers for reducing the agri-food sector’s carbon footprint and enhancing global food security. By increasing energy efficiency and minimising post-harvest losses, we can create a more resilient food system that delivers more food with a significantly lower environmental impact. We will delve into adopting renewable energy solutions on-farm, such as bioenergy, solar, and wind power, to decrease reliance on fossil fuels and ensure energy security despite climate disruptions.

The session also explores cutting-edge innovations in post-harvest management and value chains, including advanced storage, processing, and transportation technologies designed to drastically reduce food losses and waste. Emphasis will be placed on carbon footprint reduction approaches across the entire agri-food supply and value chains. This includes strategies for developing low-carbon agri-food industries from farm to fork. Ultimately, this session aims to identify actionable pathways and technologies that build agricultural resilience while making substantial contributions to global GHG reduction targets. The session also examines innovations in post-harvest management and value chains, including advanced storage, processing, and transportation technologies designed to minimise food losses and waste, leading to low-carbon agrifood industries.

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Special Sessions/Workshops

Policy Dialogue: Bringing together policymakers, scientists, and farmers to discuss actionable strategies.

Farmer-to-Farmer Knowledge Exchange: Showcasing successful case studies and practical solutions.

Youth Forum: Engaging the next generation in discussions on climate-resilient agriculture.

Capacity Building Workshops: Practical training sessions on specific tools or techniques, or research projects.

Proposals/Special Sessions are welcome

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