Bandar Lampung INDONESIA – More than a hundred scholars, students, and, experts from seven countries converged at the Southern tip of Sumatra island for a two-day seminar titled "Improving Food Security: The Challenges for Enhancing Resilience to Climate Change." The international seminar, held from 23-24 August 2016 at Emersia Hotel is jointly hosted by the Indonesian SEARCA Fellows Association (ISFA) and the University of Lampung, with support from SEARCA.
Dr. Percy E. Sajise, SEARCA Senior Fellow and Honorary Research Fellow at Bioversity International and Adjunct Professor, School of Environmental Science and Management, University of the Philippines at Los Baños (UPLB) served as one of the keynote speakers of the said seminar.He discussed the relationship between and among climate change, agriculture, and food and nutrition security.
Other resource speakers included the Senior Advisor for Food to the Minister of Environment and Forestry, the Assistant FAO Country Representative in Indonesia, the Director of SEAMEO BIOTROP, and a Chief Scientist of the World Agroforestry Research Center (ICRAF).
The aforementioned keynote addresses were complemented by 123 scientific paper presentations delivered in four parallel sessions. Among the presenters were SEARCA scholars and alumni from Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam who presented their research on different dimensions of food security.
Simultaneously, the first in a series of public fora featuring the Outstanding SEARCA Scholarship Alumni (OSSA) awardees (see related story) was held in the evening of 23 August 2016. Dr. Phan Hieu Hien and Prof. Dr. Mochammad Maksum were the OSSA laureates who served as speakers to an audience of faculty members, students, and researchers from Indonesia and neighboring countries.
