Collaboration Agreement between AgMIP and MACSUR

 

With this agreement, the Agricultural Model lntercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) and the FACCE JPI knowledge hub FACCE MACSUR (Modelling Climate Change with Agriculture for Food Security) commit their intent to collaborate in current and emerging research areas, as elaborated below.

AgMIP is a major international effort linking the climate, crop, and economic modeling communities with cutting-edge information technology to produce improved crop and economic models and the next generation of climate impact projections for the agricultural sector. Its mission is to improve substantially the characterization of world food security as affected by climate variability and change, and to enhance adaptation capacity in both developing and developed countries.

FACCE MACSUR develops a European capability in the development, use and interpretation of models to perform climate risk assessments regarding the impacts and adaptation of European agriculture to climate change and variability. The project focuses on the technical and informational integration of suitable existing models and applying them together with stakeholders in regional case studies that reflect the European diversity in soil, climate, socio-economy and agricultural systems.

The Principal Investigators of AgMIP and the Coordinators of FACCE MACSUR affirm that

  • The global challenge of food security for a growing world population requires the collaboration of scientists on this issue taking advantage of synergies,
  • AgMIP coordinates a global program of inter-comparisons, improvements and assessments of agricultural system modeling,
  • FACCE MACSUR is a scientific partner in the AgMIP global program with expert capacity to advance specific topics and methodologies that are crucial to MACSUR and AgMIP,
  • FACCE MACSUR complies with the standards of conducts and principles of AgMIP within the constraints of FACCE JPI for agreed contributions to AgMIP,
  • FACCE MACSUR and AgMIP leverage existing resources to advance current shared research priorities, and will jointly seek additional funding to advance emerging collaborative research priorities.

Current shared research priorities include:

  • Advancing scaling methods
  • Developing methods for probabilistic assessment of climate change impacts and adaptations
  • Assessment of adaptation measures in integrated regional assessments
  • Integrated regional assessments at sub-national level across diverse environments and structures
  • Representative Agricultural Pathways
  • Data translators and other IT tools

Emerging shared research priorities include:

  • Livestock and Grassland models and inter-comparisons,
  • Developing and evaluating farm Level and (sub- )national economic modelling (lntercomparison and improvement, cross-cutting as in MACSUR regional pilots),
  • Improving crop rotation models (e.g., intercomparison and improvement as in ROTATION EFFECTS study/CropM-WP1 ),
  • Improving modelling of impacts of adverse and extreme agroclimatic events across Europe (e.g., EXTREMES study/CropM-WP2/WP4),
  • Stakeholder involvement in integrated regional assessments,
  • Training of integrative modelers.

 

Collaboration means the intent of each party to:

    1. Use mutually agreed-upon AgMIP Protocols to conduct integrated climate change impact and adaptation assessments in joint activities (procedures and common protocols will be outlined in separate documents).
    2. Abide by policies established by governing bodies of each party.
    3. Give permission for each party to use the other’s logo, web resources, and products resulting from joint activities or outcomes.
    4. Commitment of each party to acknowledge the other party in reference to collaborative activities, events, outputs, or outcomes.
    5. Commitment to engage the other party in scientific meetings relating to current and emerging areas or priority research.

     

    Both AgMIP Principal Investigators and FACCE MACSUR Coordinators will keep each other informed of activities and opportunities for joint research in regular, about quarterly teleconferences and meetings (potentially with other AgMIP partners), exchange of newsletters, etc.

    The principal contact address for FACCE MACSUR is coordination@macsur.eu (Banse, Tiffin, Kochy, Jorgenson).

    The principal contact address for AgMIP is coordination@agmip.org (Rosenzweig, Jones, Hatfield, Antle, Mutter).

    Signed for AgMIP by Cynthia Rosenzweig, James Jones, Jerry Hatfield and John Antle

    Signed for MACSUR by Martin Banse and Richard Tiffin