International Conference Held on the Impact of El Niño on Biodiversity, Agriculture and Food Security

The International Conference on the Impact of El Niño on Biodiversity, Agriculture and Food Security was held on 23 -24 February 2017 at the Resource Center of Haramaya University. The conference was organized by College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences (CAES) of Haramaya University and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change of Ethiopia (MoEFCC).

This international conference was organized with the aims of reviewing, discussing and sharing the lessons learnt from managing El Niño impacts; connecting the scientific research knowledge to operational communities; developing key massage and shared recommendations for policy makers, practitioners, and the public and identifying directions for the future work in climate services and in developing appropriate El Niño response strategies.

During the opening session of the conference, Dr. Kibebew Kibret, Dean of CAES and Prof. Nigussie Dechassa, Vice-president for Academic Affairs of Haramaya University forwarded their welcoming remarks and speeches emphasizing on the impacts of El Niño on East Africa and the need to explore solutions and future direction in the policy arena.

H.E. Dr. Gemedo Dalle, Minister of MoEFCC remarked focus on the relationship between climate change and biodiversity, and the requirement for nature based solutions that can benefit the poor in the developing nations like Ethiopia should be given emphasis.
Mr. Abdeta Debella, Country Coordinator of mainstreaming biodiversity incentives for climate resilience green economy (UNDP-GEF) projects in Ethiopia, also provided current figures of the social and economic impacts of the recent El Niño in Ethiopia and called for synergy between institutions.

Then after, introduction about the conference given by Conference organizer, Mr. Sintayehu Workeneh, and highlighted that the conference aimed to connect the scientific research knowledge to operational communities and identifying directions for the future work in climate services and in developing appropriate El Niño response strategies.
In the two days, a total of twenty seven (19 oral and 8 poster) scientific presentations, and a panel discussion were delivered by presenters and panelists.
The discussions have enabled the conference participants to recognize the urgency to take action by all the stakeholders towards El Niño, which is exacerbated by climate change.
In line with this, the conference set some policy briefs and recommendations to pave the way forward on El Niño issues and closing remarks were made by Prof. Kebede W/Tsadik, Vice-president of Community Engagement and Enterprise Development. The conference was attended by more than 160 participants who came from different countries, disciplines, organizations, and institutions that have a stake on El Niño and its impacts.