Symposium MARCO 2012 “Renforcer la collaboration pour repondre aux défis agroenvironnementaux en Asie”
Monsoon Asian countries are blessed with natural resources for agriculture by warm and seasonal humid climate, which sustain about 60% of the world’s human population within about 16% of earth’s land surface.
The dominance of rice cultivation and family-owned small scale agriculture in this region has developed agro-ecosystems with long sustainability of food production and biodiversity comprising various species. On the other hand, the agro-ecosystems in monsoon Asia have been intensively disturbed or managed by human activities for many centuries and are now involved in rapid economic, social and environmental changes. As a result, a drastic deterioration of the ecosystems has been observed recently due to climate change, urbanization, pollution by toxic chemicals, or invasion of alien species. Therefore, it is imperative that researchers, engineers, and administrative authorities of this region internationally closely collaborate to meet growing needs to agriculture while harmonizing nature.
The MARCO Symposium 2012 was held to provide a venue for exchanging the status quo of problems and the latest results of studies, and for discussing the direction of future research and ways to strengthen collaboration for agro-environmental challenges in monsoon Asia.
An ad-hoc meeting of the Asian Soil Partnership was organized in Tsukuba at the margins of the MARCO Symposium by the National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences (NIAES) to define a road map that was consolidated through the Tsukuba Statement.