12 August 2008: In a speech delivered during the opening of the Food and Agriculture Organization/International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) International Symposium on Induced Mutations in Plants, Werner Burkart, IAEA
Deputy Director General, noted that in 2008, the international community became conscience of the links between climate change, the food and energy crises and hunger.
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11 August 2008: The International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) are organizing
an International Symposium on Induced Mutations in Plants, from 12-15 August
2008, in Vienna, Austria. The event will bring together scientists to focus on
the latest innovations aimed at improving crop productivity in an effort to
solve the food and energy crises.
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6 August 2008: The UN Resident Coordinator for the
Philippines, Nileema Noble, and counterparts in the Philippines Government,
signed a Joint Programme on ‘Strengthening the Philippines' Institutional
Capacity to Adapt to Climate Change,' with a US$8 million grant from the Millennium Development Goals Achievement
Fund (MDG-F).
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8 August 2008: On the eve of the International Day for the World's Indigenous Peoples, which is celebrated on 9 August, Regina Laub, the
UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) focal point for Indigenous Peoples,
noted that climate change and limited land rights increasingly threaten
indigenous peoples' livelihoods.
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25 July 2008: At the first global scientific conference of the Global Cassava Partnership, held from 21-24 July, 2008 in Ghent, Belgium, scientists and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) called for a significant increase in investment in research and development needed to boost farmers' yields and explore promising industrial uses of cassava, including biofuels production.
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July 2008: Through its Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and Agriculture (GIEWS), the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) provides regularly updated information on
the current situation of global agriculture and food security.
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21
July 2008: The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) has announced the
development of a new database on the world's soils. This database seeks to
improve knowledge of current and future land productivity, as well as the
carbon storage and carbon sequestration potential of the world's soils. Using
the database, the FAO has also produced a global Carbon Gap Map, which allows
for the identification of areas where soil carbon storage is greatest and the
physical potential for billions of tons of additional carbon to be sequestrated
in degraded soils.
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17 July 2008: The UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) concluded
its three-day Humanitarian Affairs Segment by convening a panel discussion on “Humanitarian
challenges related to global food aid, including enhancing international
efforts and cooperation in this field,” chaired by
Council Vice-President Park In-kook (Republic of Korea) and moderated by John Holmes, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs.
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16 July 2008: The
Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) has announced that the 2010
Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA 2010) will include a remote sensing
survey, which will document trends in the rate of deforestation, afforestation
and natural forest expansion over the last three decades; provide easy access
to remote sensing imagery; create a methodology and framework for monitoring of
forest change; and enhance countries' capacities to monitor, assess and report
on changes in forest cover.
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14
July 2008: An International Workshop on Advances in Operational Weather Systems
for Fire Danger Rating, organized jointly by World Meteorological Organization
(WMO), the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's Panel for Global Observation
of Forest and Land Cover Dynamics (GOFC-GOLD), and Natural Resources Canada's
Canadian Forest Service, in collaboration with a number of other co-sponsors, is
being held from 14-16 July 2008, in Edmonton, Canada.
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