This meeting is the third in a series of consultations between agricultural scientists (in particular those interested in the conservation and use of crop diversity in plant improvement) and climate scientists on how to adapt agriculture to climate change. The first meeting, also held at Bellagio (3-7 September 2007), looked at the Conservation and Use of Global Crop Genetic Resources in the Face of Climate Change. It identified three major challenges facing the adaptation process: collecting crop diversity before it disappears, using it to breed better adapted crops, and informing key players of the increased need for the conservation and effective use of crop genetic resources in the face of climate change.

The second meeting, held at Stanford University on 16-18 June 2009, looked more specifically at breeding, and in particular at Climate Extremes and Crop Adaptation. Among other things, it recommended that efforts to develop heat tolerant varieties of the major cereals be intensified, and that greater investments be made in genotyping and phenotyping the variation already held in genebanks, and in collecting remaining diversity.

This third meeting in the series, and second at Bellagio, focused on a specific area of intersection between the ground covered by the previous consultations: the role of plants that are closely related to crops but are not themselves cultivated (crop wild relatives, or CWRs for short) in breeding varieties better adapted to future climates. The following questions were asked:

1) What is the evidence for the value of wild relatives in breeding for tolerance to abiotic and biotic stresses in general, and heat and drought tolerance in particular? Are there specific crops where we can anticipate that the collecting and or use of crop wild relatives will be of particular importance in the context of climate change?

2) What are the most useful techniques for identifying gaps in collections of crop wild relatives, what are the areas and populations most threatened by climate change, and areas and populations most likely to yield materials with traits of interest to breeders (especially drought and heat resistance)? And what R&D is needed to improve these techniques or create new, more effective ones?

3) In what form would breeders ideally want genebanks to provide them with crop wild relatives material? What specific changes in the current way genebanks and breeders do business and interact will be necessary to make this happen? What options exist to sustainably finance efforts to collect, conserve and use crop wild relatives, and to expand pre-breeding efforts?

Three specific goals for the proposed meeting. The first is to inform a strategic plan being developed by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, the Millennium Genebank, Bioversity International and the CGIAR Centres to ensure the ex situ conservation of priority crop wild relatives and their long-term availability and use in climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts. The second will be broader set of policy briefs for the crop development community, and the third will be a series of publications that summarize the work leading up to and resulting from the meeting.

In this analysis of the region, Hicham Ben Abdallah points out that, while political issues are important to understanding the authoritarian political structures of the Arab world, it is also important to understand the dynamics of culture.  Ben Abdallah demonstrates the proliferation of cultural practices through which societies and individuals learn to live in a complex mix of parallel and conflicting ideological tendencies -- with the increasing Islamicization of everyday ideology developing alongside the proliferation of secular forms of cultural production, while both negotiate for breathing room under the aegis of an authoritarian state. 

He describes how the state takes advantage of a segmented cultural scene by posing as a restraint against the extremes of the salafist norm, while channeling modernist cultural expression into safe institutional and patronage reward systems  and into a commercialized process of "festivalization," all of which celebrate a depoliticized "Arab" identity. 

Hicham Ben Abdallah refers us to the deep history of Islam, which protected divergent cultural and intellectual influences as the patrimony of mankind.  He suggests a new cultural paradigm, inspired by this history while understanding the necessity for political democratization and cultural modernism.  We must, he argues, be unafraid to face the challenges implied in the tension between the growing influence of a salafist norm and the widespread embrace of implicitly secular cultural practices throughout the Arab world.   

Hicham Ben Abdallah El Alaoui received a B.A. in Politics from Princeton University, and an M.A in Politics from Stanford University. He recently founded the Moulay Hicham Foundation for Social Science Research on North Africa and the Middle East, and serves as its Director.   

Through this Foundation he has established the Program on Good Governance and Political Reform in the Arab World, at The Freeman Spogli Institute's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University.  Hicham Ben Abdallah is a member of the Advisory Board of the Freeman Spogli Institute. 

He has also recently founded a program in Global Climate Change, Democracy and Human Security (known as the "Climate Change and Democracy Project), in the Division of Social Sciences, Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, at the University of California, Santa Barbara.   

In 1994, at Princeton University, Hicham Ben Abdallah endowed the Institute for the Trans-regional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia.  This Institute has become an important venue for study and debate on the region. 

Hicham Ben Abdallah is also active in global humanitarian and social issues. He serves on the Human Rights Watch Board of Directors for the Middle East and North Africa.   He has worked with the Carter Center on a number of initiatives, including serving as an international observer with the Carter Center delegations during elections in Palestine in 1996 and 2006, and in Nigeria in 2000.  In 2000, he served as Principal Officer for Community Affairs with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo . 

Hicham Ben Abdallah is also an entrepreneur in the domain of renewable energy.  His company, Al Tayyar Energy, develops projects that produce clean energy at competitive prices.  He has implemented several of these projects in Asia, Europe and North America.

Kirk R. Smith will speak about his current research on health-damaging and climate-changing air pollution from household energy use in developing Asia, including field measurement and health-effects studies in India, China, and Nepal, compared to other countries such as Mexico and Guatemala. The work encompasses developing and deploying small, smart, and cheap microchip-based monitors as well as tools for international policy assessments.

Dr. Smith is Professor of Global Environmental Health and Director of the Global Health and Environment Program at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley.  Previously, he was founder and head of the Energy Program of the East-West Center in Honolulu, where he still holds appointment as Adjunct Senior Fellow in Environment and Health after moving to Berkeley in 1995. He serves on a number of national and international scientific advisory committees including the Global Energy Assessment, National Research Council's Board on Atmospheric Science and Climate, the Executive Committee for WHO Air Quality Guidelines, and the International Comparative Risk Assessment. He participated along with many other scientists in the IPCC's 3rd and 4th assessments and thus shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He holds visiting professorships in India and China and bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees from UC Berkeley. In 1997, he was elected a member of the US National Academy of Sciences. In 2009, he received the Heinz Prize in Environment.

The world watches closely as China, the world's top energy consumer, announces its plans for the next five years: a series of comprehensive economic reform, development, and transformation guidelines that will shape how the country - and to a large extent the world - uses energy and addresses climate change.

How will China balance economic growth with environmental concerns? How will it manage its transformation from an investment-based and export-led economy to one having a robust domestic demand, all the while ensuring energy efficiency and sustainability? And what role will China play in developing renewable and clean tech solutions for the rest of the world? These are questions that have a profound impact on the world energy and climate landscape for years to come.

In this EWG discussion, we will highlight some of the proposed energy, efficiency and climate goals and policies, look back on China's progress and challenges in achieving its last five-year plan, and consider broader implications on the road ahead.