ZEF Bonn

tion of landscape elements and their respective carbon pools in vegetation and soils
for extrapolation. Another PhD project will view different development scenarios of
the wetlands in the Mekong River Basin.
The Kyoto Protocol introduced new mechanisms to finance the mitigation of GHG
emissions in developing countries. Production from tropical agricultural systems will
need to increase, to meet the rising demands of an increasing human population
together with changes in consumption patterns over coming decades. Intensification
and/or extensification of agricultural production using conventional technologies
may, in turn, increase GHG production.
To address the issue of mitigating GHG emission, ZEF and the Fraunhofer Institute
for Atmospheric Environmental Research jointly organised an international workshop,
which was held in Bonn from Nov. 9-11 2001. The workshop, entitled “Tropical
Agriculture in Transition - Opportunities for Mitigating Greenhouse Gas Emissions?",
was attended by 50 scientists from 14 countries.
The participants agreed that the prevention of deforestation - the prime source of
GHG - and the re-forestation of degraded land should have priority in national climate
protection programs of developing countries. Furthermore, it was pointed out
that future research has to include participation of stakeholders from all conceivable
levels, i.e. farmers' co-operatives, non-governmental organisations, national agricultural
research centres and extension services, to devise simple and financially
interesting incentives for reducing emissions. The feasibility of environmentallyfriendly
production techniques has to be disseminated to the public through 'success
stories' documented in public media and on special demonstration farms.
3.1.2 Water scarcity and resource management
ZEF tackles the issue of water management at several points. It assesses the functioning
of the water cycle at a watershed level as affected by land cover, analyses
the ecological functions of water vis-à-vis its productive role and monitors the
effect of water utilisation on its quality and potential downstream re-use. ZEF's
interdisciplinary, core program in this regard, the GLOWA-Volta Project on
“Sustainable Water Use under Changing Land Use, Rainfall Reliability, and Water
Demands in the Volta Basin", is already in an advanced stage of development. It is
described in detail in a previous section.
Research
To address the issue of mitigation
of greenhouse gas emission,
ZEF and the Fraunhofer
Institute for Atmospheric
Environmental Research jointly
organised an international
workshop in 2001 that was
attended by 50 scientists from
14 countries.
Drought, GLOWA-
Volta project
55