The Organizing Committee of EURAF Conference 2020 is pleased to announce the upcoming 5th edition of the European Conference on Agroforestry, that will be held in Italy in May 2020.
Sardinia has been selected as the ideal setting for hosting EURAF Conference 2020. The Island well represents the Mediterranean environment where agroforestry, embodied by a mosaic of historical rural landscapes, plays a strategic agro-ecological role for rural development.
Sardinia is the second largest island in the Mediterranean and one of the least densely populated regions of Italy and, according to the latest estimates, the richest in woodland systems.
The first call for abstracts is now open. Please check the website dedicated to EURAF Conference 2020 with further details on the conference.
In 2018, the European Forest Institute granted the “European Forest Island” award to Sardinia acknowledging its commitment to the protection of Mediterranean forest systems and the substantial investments to protect the forest heritage and the bio-economy of renewable resources.
The conference will be organized in the town of Nuoro and will be designed as a widespread event across the urban centre. The town and the surroundings witness extremely interesting examples of agroforestry systems deeply rooted in local traditions. This land, though, is very open to the influences of foreign countries and to cultural contamination and is, thus, continuously fostering new cultural incentives for innovations, as attested by the local University activities and several national and international events for contemporary art and culture.
Such environment will catalyse the exchange of scientific knowledge and technical experiences among conference participants on the most burning environmental and socioeconomic issues, as indicated by some of the main conference themes: climate change, conservation and innovations of traditional and new agroforestry systems, wildfire prevention, quality productions and certification, landscape and rural tourism.
The conference will take place from Monday the 18th till Wednesday the 20th of May 2020, with 2 days of plenary and parallel sessions and a full day field trip during the conference. A late afternoon welcoming event on Sunday the 17th will open the meeting. Furthermore, additional activities, such as post-conference study trips in Sardinia and other Italian regions, will allow the participants to extend their stay in Italy and further enjoy the Sardinian rural culture or visit further Italian agroforestry systems.
The EURAF 2020 is organized with the local support of Uninuoro and FoReSTAS in collaboration with several Italian public and private research institutions, national, regional and local authorities and associations, all dealing with agroforestry at different levels.
To share more information on EURAF Conference 2020, let’s meet in Montpellier in May 2019!