Back to news
29 Feb 2016 | News

AIRCA Annual Steering Committee Meeting in Costa Rica

3 mins Read

70% Complete

Directors and representatives of all members Association of International Research and Development Centers for Agriculture (AIRCA) gathered on in early February 2016, for the 5th Steering Committee Meeting of AIRCA. The meeting was hosted by the Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE), one of the founding AIRCA members, at their compound in Turrialba.

CATIE is a regional centre dedicated to research and graduate education in agriculture, and the management, conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Its members include Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Venezuela, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and the State of Acre in Brazil.

The meeting started with a review of the year 2015, highlighting AIRCA participation in the 2015 Global Landscapes Forum, a side event to the COP 21 in Paris. AIRCA participated for the first time as an implementing partner and hosted a discussion forum on the topic ‘Restoring Landscapes through Climate Smart Agriculture’. AIRCA members also organised and participated in a number of other events around the COP 21 and GLF.

Other developments in 2015 included the finalisation of the Lake Victoria Concept Note. In terms of publicity and outreach material, AIRCA produced in 2015 the first two editions of the AIRCA Newsletter as well as a brochure on the Sustainable Development Goals and how AIRCA can help achieving a large number of them.

In terms of AIRCA governance, two new AIRCA Deputy Chairs were appointed: Sayed Azam Ali, CEO of Crops for the Future, and David Molden, Director General of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), who will form the AIRCA executive committee together with icipe’s Director General Segenet Kelemu, who succeeded AVRDC’s Dyno Keatinge as AIRCA chair in January 2016.

For the coming year, two new working groups will be established. One of them will take AIRCA work on SDGs further by developing a research capability statement linking AIRCA’s wide range of research portfolios with SDGs and their target, showing the number of SDGs AIRCA is able to address. It was also decided to capitalise on the experience and success stories AIRCA members have in the promotion of healthy landscapes, namely with the development of a concept note on methodologies in measuring the health of landscapes.

Key events for AIRCA in 2016 will include the CGARD 3 Global Event in Johannesburg and the COP 13 on Biodiversity. AIRCA partnerships with regional association like APAARI and CACAARI among others will be strengthened, as well as support to the Tropical Agriculture Platform (TAP), a G20 initiative that aims to facilitate capacity development in agricultural innovations in the tropics.

The AIRCA steering committee agreed to fully support the Global Action Plan for Agricultural Diversification (GAPAD), an initiative led by Crops for the Future and its partners that will help mitigate climate challenges by diversifying agriculture within species, between species and between agricultural ecosystems. Activities for 2016 will include a series of regional symposia in preparation of the launch of the GAPAD at the CBD COP 13 in December 2016.

AIRCA as an association as well as the members will also become members of GODAN (Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition), a CABI-hosted network which works to support global efforts to make agricultural and nutritionally relevant data available, accessible, and usable for application worldwide.

AIRCA host CATIE organised a presentation of some key aspects of their work, including the Livestock Program and Environmental Management (GAMMA) of the institution and their germplasm collections of coffee and cacao, known for their international importance.

The meeting included a field trip in which participants visited several sites around the province of Cartago, where they discussed development initiatives and landscape management, systems and subsystems landscapes, conservation, ecosystem services and climate change.

The next AIRCA steering committee meeting in February 2017 will be hosted by Crops for the Future at their campus in Malaysia.

Stay current

Stay up to date on what’s happening around the HKH with our most recent publications and find out how you can help by subscribing to our mailing list.

Sign Up

Related content

Continue exploring this topic

Homestay Congress 2020: Pioneering dialogue for regional homestay development in the Kangchenjunga Landscape

Homestays serve as an essential aspect of rural tourism in the Kangchenjunga Landscape (KL). They integrate sustainable resource utilization (especially ...

25 May 2017 Himalica
High-level Bangladeshi Delegates visit Dabur Nepal’s Ashok Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Centre in Banepa

The Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh hold great promise for the production and commercialization of non-timber forest products such as ...

23 Jun 2016 News
Cryosphere Data Release

Open access to high-elevation meteorological data and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) data from the Himalayas Meteorological data is scarce in high-elevation ...

21 Jun 2018 Cryosphere
Cryosphere Information Hub for Bhutan

The National Center for Hydrology and Meteorology (NCHM) in Bhutan will soon have a Cryosphere Information Hub that will share ...

2 Jan 2015 News
Asia-Pacific Youth Forum and Training Workshop on Mountain Adaptation

Participants included high-level bureaucrats, youth leaders, researchers, and tech innovators from the region. They engaged in capacity building, ...

15 May 2015 News
Impact of Nepal Earthquake 2015 on Langthang Valley

  The 7.8 magnitude Nepal earthquake on April 25, 2015 and subsequent aftershocks caused more than 8,500 fatalities, nearly 22,500 injured, ...

17 Nov 2015 News
The Music in Ziro

  By 7am, we were in Ziro. Rubu got us on the road that crisscrossed the vast horizon of paddy fields. ...

22 Sep 2015 News
Nepal’s Digital Agriculture Atlas Launched

The Digital Agriculture Atlas of Nepal takes data closer to decision makers by providing a one-stop shop for information related ...