The First International Conference on Global Rural Development and Land Capacity Building was held on August 26-29, 2017 in Yulin City, Shaanxi Province, China. Over 240 people from 17 different countries/districts participated in this conference. A key question was considered regarding rural decline, namely how to investigate the relationship between rural transformation and land use with a view to contributing to sustainable agriculture and rural development. The aim was to provide a platform to a wide range of audiences/researchers from developing and developed countries, especially engaged in highlighting issues such as rural depopulation, industrial recession in rural areas, problems of agricultural security and abandonment of farmland as well as their various impacts. A Global Rural Plan was jointly initiated by the IGU-AGLE, and commission on Sustainability of Rural Systems, Land Use and Land Cover Change. The plan is intended to bring the world's rural scholars together and make the world a better place. This conference was the inaugural conference of the IGU-AGLE Commission.
The opening ceremony was hosted by Prof. Hualou Long, deputy director of the CRARD. Bojie Fu, President of GSC, Academician of CAS, Director of the Department of Earth Sciences at Na tional Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), Michael E. Meadows, Secretary-General and Treasurer of the IGU, Xiulan Ma, Vice Mayor of Yulin Municipal People’s Government, Jinghong Xu, President of Yulin University, Holly Barcus, Chair of IGU-CSRS Commission, Yansui Liu, Chair of the conference organizing committee and Chair of IGU-AGLE Commission, delivered opening addresses and welcome addresses, respectively. Experts and scholars from both home and abroad concur that attention should be paid to the time, international and strategic nature of global rural development and land capacity building, and the problem of global rural decline and land degradation should be specially noticed. It is essential to enhance the frontier, systematicness and urgency of international cooperation research.
B. Keynote speeches and parallel sessions
Keynote speeches were presided over by Dr. Yuheng Li, Secretary of IGU-AGLE Commission. Michael E. Meadows firstly gave a speech entitled “Soil erosion and soil conservation in the wheat belt of the Western Cape Province of South Africa: Historical perspectives, recent trends”, which described how the Western Cape appears to have been the verge of economic collapse due to the severity of soil erosion during the 1940s. Bojie Fu delivered a keynote speech entitled “Understanding China’s Ecosystems: Processes, Services and Management”, which presented an analysis of current situation of Chinese ecosystems and introduced Chinese Ecosystem Research Network (CERN), and finally discussed the adaptive management strategies aiming at restoring and improving the capability of ecosystems that provide services. Holly Barcus gave a speech entitled “Contested space, contested livelihoods: An overview of two decades of pasture management and land ten ure reform in Mongolia”, which identified three distinct periods of land tenure debate emerging post-1990 in Mongolia, and drew on an extensive review of policy documents and contemporary literature to consider the multi-scalar implications of rapid national growth on internal population redistribution, land use rights, and the underlying importance of place. Guy M. Robinson gave a speech entitled “Local and global impacts on cherry growing: Examples of rural transformation from Shaanxi Province, China and the Adelaide Hills, South Australia”, which analyzed the con trasts and similarities between the two examples in the interplay between the global and the local influences while the Chinese example reflects aspects of the huge transformations affecting the Chinese countryside following the national economic reforms commenced in late 1978. Hans Westlund gave a speech entitled “Transformation of Agriculture and Land-Use in the Post-Urban World: Examples from Sweden and the Stockholm Region”, which studied spatial and temporal changes in land use with a focus on the Stockholm metropolitan region by exploring the number and size of agricultural firms, changes in their main activity and trends of diversification and land prices for various types of land and location. Yansui Liu gave a speech entitled “Land Engineering for Agricultural Sustainability-from China to the world”. He systematically intro duced the research background, the innovation system and integration theory of agricultural ge ography and land engineering, described the four research stations aiming at degraded-land im provement, gully land consolidation, hollowed village consolidation and poverty alleviation, and proposed the frontiers and research plan on agricultural geography and land engineering. Brigitte Nougarèdes gave a speech entitled “A conceptual framework to analyze social justice issues in farmland preservation and development on the urban fringe in France”, which applied the con ceptual framework on the case studies and found that French policy alternatives were quite effec tive regarding land preservation, yet they tend to neglect justice issues and were not effective in resolving other issues such as food security, and impeding the renewal and diversification of farms that would be necessary to develop a multifunctional agriculture and local food systems. Bob Nanes gave a speech entitled “Promotion of local innovation as a support to rural devel opment”, which introduced MIT’s recent research to establish the importance of promoting local innovation as a support to rural development. Yong Chang gave speech entitled “Research of agricultural sustainable development in agro-pastoral ecotone”, which analyzed current prob lems of agricultural development in the agro-pastoral ecotone of northern China and proposed the sustainable agriculture development measures taking Yulin as the case study.
C. Closing ceremony
Closing ceremony was presided over by Dr. Yuheng Li. The conference has established Distin guished Scholar Award, Young Scholar Award, Outstanding Thesis Award, Conference Contribu tion Award and Special Contribution Award. The awards ceremony was held at the closing cere mony. Then, Yansui Liu read out the proposal of “Global Rural Plan”. He congratulated the suc cessful convening of the conference, summarized the academic exchange and panel discussion of the conference, and expressed his sincere thanks to the organizers, co-organizers and all the par ticipants.
D. Proposal of “Global Rural Plan”
Based on expert consensus and suggestions, the “Global Rural Plan” was jointly launched by IGU-AGLE, IGU-CSRS, and IGU-LUCC. The proposed “Global Rural Plan” suggests that the geographers should take positive action and offer suggestions for effective implementation of rural revitalization program. The proposed “Global Rural Plan” calls for a series of actions: (1) To promote the establishment of the “Global Rural Plan” at the United Nations. It is very con sidered essential necessary to propose the theme of rural revival to counter the effects of urbani zation across the globe; (2) To promote collaborations among the IGU commissions on Agricul tural Geography and Land Engineering, Sustainability of Rural Systems, Land Use and Land Cover Change to bring the world’s rural scholars together; (3) To hold the annual global meetings and regional conferences with a rural focus such as rural land in the countryside, agriculture, livelihoods and education; (4) To launch the joint scientific investigation of the socioeconomic, resources and environmental situations of villages of different areal types in the world, and to release a global world’s rural development report; (5) To promote and intensify communications and collaborations with the World Bank, FAO, UNDP and UNEP; and (6) To mobilize resources to support villages in the least developed countries and to seek solutions for rural revival and sustainability. The “Global Rural Plan” is intended to make the world a better place.
E. Post-conference field investigations
To fully understand the problems of degraded land in Mu Us desert and make clear the barriers in agriculture development, post-conference field investigations were arranged for participants to excurse to red clay borrow pit at Qianwantan in Qinhe town in Mu Us desert, the experimental station on optimization engineering of modern agriculture, Yulin national agricultural science and technology park-the experiment station, and new rural development demonstration area - Zhao jiamao village. At the experimental station on optimization engineering of modern agriculture, scholars and researchers exchanged ideas extensively about the optimization engineering tech nology of land consolidation and seed selection of modern agriculture, investigated field comparison test scheme and recent researches about implementing the order land consolidation and how to sow the improved varieties on the fertile soil. Experts including Michael E. Meadows, Guy M. Robinson, Hans Westlund, Bob Nanes, Brigitte Nougaredes, Rajendra P. Shrestha, Zhixiang She, etc., wrote inscriptions for the scientific design and test achievements. They en couraged the experimenters to make unremitting efforts, work more grass roots research, and take the exploration and innovation to advance the research of land consolidation, modern agri culture and rural integration development.
