The UK and Chinese governments today signed a three year commitment to
strengthen their growing partnership on agriculture. Hilary Benn, UK
Environment Secretary, met the Chinese Agriculture Minister, Sun
Zhengcai and signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on
Cooperation on Sustainable Agriculture. The Ministers also launched the
Sustainable Agriculture Innovation Network (SAIN) which will help
address the link between agriculture and climate change. This new
network will provide a clear plan for the development and
implementation of China-UK collaboration on environmentally sustainable
agriculture. Launching SAIN, Hilary Benn said: “We want to work with
China to promote sustainable agriculture. This network will enable us
to do this. It will help us to learn from each other and share
expertise so that we are more resource and carbon efficient and reduce
our impact on the environment. “This will be important not only for
China and the UK, but for the world as a whole as we face the challenge
of increasing food production in an environmentally sustainable way at
a time of growing impacts of climate change.”Chinese Minister of
Agriculture Sun Zhengcai said: “With the accelerated development of the
economic globalisation process, a series of important issues such as
food security, climate change, food safety, environmental pollution,
invasive alien species and biodiversity, have become the common global
issues of concern. “It is my hope that our two countries will make good
use of this platform of SAIN so that we can follow the sustainable
development concept, create new cooperative models and carry out
cooperation in the areas of food security, environmental protection,
climate change and the use of renewable energy in order to make our
contribution to sustainable development in our two countries and
elsewhere in the world.”
SAIN will help deliver the MoU and the Agriculture and Fisheries Work
Programme of the UK-China Sustainable Development Dialogue. For more
info: www.defra.gov.uk
<br><i>Source of information:</i> DEFRA, Dept. for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, UK