FAO Working Groups: WASAG and INSAS
The FAO aims at food security for all throughout the world and sees agriculture as a key in responding to climate change.
WASAG
SalFar partners co-operate with the FAO working group WASAG – The Global Framework on Water Scarcity in Agriculture and, of course, play a role in the subgroup “Saline Agriculture”.
This group brings together key players across the globe and across sectors to foster resource efficiency, in particular to improve the use of water in agriculture to ensure food security for all. Partners from all fields and backgrounds collaborate in supporting countries to contribute to the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, the Paris Climate Agreement (including implementing nationally determined contributions) and other plans and programmes related to agriculture and water.
Currently this group is developing guidelines for saline farming to train farmers who have to cope with saline soils and have hardly any freshwater access. Leader of the working group is Dionysia Angeliki Lyra from the ICBA – International Centre for Biosaline Agriculture, keynote speaker on the SalFar conference in September 2019 in Leeuwarden. For more info click here.
The other FAO network SalFar is collaborating with is INSAS – The International Network of Salt-Affected Soils. INSAS was launched in 2019 during the International Center for Biosaline Agriculture’s (ICBA) first Global Forum on Innovations for Marginal Environments. It is a Technical Network of the Global Soil Partnership (GSP) and follow its Rules of procedure. The Network aims to facilitate the sustainable and productive use of salt-affected soils for the current and future generations.
The mission of INSAS is to support and facilitate joint efforts towards the sustainable management of salt-affected soils for food security, agricultural sustainability and climate change adaptation and mitigation.
INSAS wants to enhance the collaboration between scientists, practitioners and policy-makers aimed at the sustainable management of salt-affected soils and to serve as a platform for capacity development, knowledge sharing and technical cooperation on salt-affected soils monitoring and management;
Leader of this working group is Maria Konyushkova, senior researcher at the Soil Science faculty of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, who also contributed to the SalFar conference in Leeuwarden in 2019. Our colleague Kate Negacz is vice chair of the INSAS network. For more info click here.
Photo: (From the left) Kate Negacz, vice chair of the INSAS network - Dionysia Angeliki Lyra, leader of the working group WASAG - Maria Konyushkova, leader of the working group INSAS.