23th -25th August, the international conference on "Innovations in Agriculture to Ensure Food Security in Changing Climate" was held in Pakistan, which is co-organized by The Islamia University of Bahawalpur (IUB), Bahawalpur- Pakistan, International Center for Climate and Environmental sciences (ICCES), and National Disaster Risk Management Fund (NDRMF), Pakistan. It was supported by Pakistan Science Foundation. More than 100 scientists, researchers, students, policy makers and farmers from China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Germany, Thailand, South Korea, Peru, Bangladesh, and Nigeria participated in the conference.
Opening the event, Prof. Athar Mahboob, the Vice Chancellor of IUB gave welcome address, then Prof. Zhaohui LIN, director of ICCES delivered a keynote speech. Prof. Lin firstly appreciated the initiative of IUB in playing a leading role in establishing the "International Center for Climate Change, Food Security and Sustainability (ICCFS) for practical execution of research interventions" for achieving SDGs. He then delivered the speech titled “drought variation and its impact on major cereal yield: case study over Nepal”. Prof. LIN discussed the changing climate leads to frequent weather extremes which severely harm the global agricultural industry, putting food security in crisis. He emphasized the needs for climate modeling and the urgent of international collaboration for combating climate change in developing countries.
The goal of the conference was to emphasize the important roles that science and technology play in Agricultural Industry to ensure food security in changing climate, as well as to raise awareness on S&T collaboration in developing countries in Agriculture. 30 Experts from China, Pakistan, USA Thailand, Canada, Brazil, Germany, and Turkey participated as speakers, discussing their recent works, sharing their experiences, and suggesting sustainable strategies toward innovations, tools, and skills of sustainable agriculture in changing climate.
ICCES has been collaborating with IUB to promote capacity-building of developing countries in the fields of climate sciences and agriculture under a Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2021. In 2022, more than 65 universities, research organizations, private sector, industries from all regions of Pakistan formed a consortium (CCSC) to work together for addressing the major challenges related to climate change, agriculture, food security, sustainability. The IUB being a focal university of CCSC is playing a leading role in this. ICCES is proud to be the international partner of this consortium. It believed this consortium will open the new horizons of collaboration. There will be more activities of research and capacity building of students, researchers, scientists in the coming year.