The talk entitled “sustainable management of resources in agriculture in a fragile and resource poor context” was presented by Jutta Schmiz who works with GIZ on a sector project aimed at sustainable management of resources and agriculture. She started her talk by explaining that fragile ecosystems are either caused by nature or by human interference and that this usually affect ecosystems, making them unable to achieve their basic functions properly. She also noted that agriculture is not only a part of the solution but can also be part of the problem. According to her, agriculture can contribute to the solution but if done in the wrong way (using bad farming practices), it also increases the fragility of the ecosystem. The speaker noted that fragility is not only attributable to resources but that even countries can be in fragile conditions. She explained that nations or states can be said to be fragile when there are weak institutions which fail to provide basic services to the population and this is mostly in developing countries. Such fragile nations may experience problems such as; low water availability, soil infertility and unavailability of other resources needed for agriculture and healthy livelihoods. Global challenges in Agriculture According to Jutta Schmiz, agriculture faces numerous challenges which may slightly vary in different parts of the world. She mentioned some common ones as; 1. Rapidly growing population 2. Changing diets especially with more meat requirements 3. Climate change which comes with different scenarios and implications 4. Need for additional biomass as fuel She explained that all these factors present challenges to agriculture and lead to inceased presure on natural resources which again has effect on fragile ecosystems. Jutta Schmitz also presented one of the greatest challenges of dealing with fragile ecosystems as the need to increase irrigation by 12-17% by 2030 in order to secure global food supply while at the same time, scientist argue that there is the need to decrease irrigation by 5-10% in order to secure ecosystem functioning. She explained that these figures are supposed to be taken on a global scale so that while irrigation can be increased in some places, it is reduced in others. Dealing with and improving the resource poor context will require some activities such as sustainable management of resources in agriculture, water management, soil management, integrated resource management, agrobiodiversity conservation etc. She stated that though there may be several possible ways of addressing fragile ecosystems in resource poor contexts, caution must be taken to ensure that any measures taken to intervene must be ecologically viable and socially acceptable. Role of development corporations The speaker stated that development corporations should help to improve the framework conditions of partner countries by employing different measures such as; 1. Introduction of payment for environmental services schemes and how to include the market for it. This implies that farmers should be paid some incentives for their contribution to conservation of ecosystem services. 2. Ensuring market acess to public private partnership 3. Development and promotion of coherent agricultural policy incentives and regulation 4. Strive to link activities to grass roots As an example, she spoke about some success that the GIZ has achieved in the sector of water conservation in Egypt. They were able to put together the ministry of water and the ministry of agriculture to ensure effective coordination between the two sectors. The result is that the advisory and support services for effective water user organizations and agricultural water management is being improved. She noted that the development and implementation of water management plans including improving water qualility at decentralized levels is a main focus of the next phase of the GIZ project in Egypt. Lessons Learned from the Project in Egypt 1. The best success was realized at lower level because more water was needed downstream 2. The project was able to implement joint training for staff of both ministries. The idea is that even though strategies can not be entirely merged, people can be brought together for interchange of ideas which will inform the design of their separate strategies. 3. To address problems of resource poor and fragile ecosystems, it is important to have a good database - to know how much land is available, how much water is required for a particular field etc but who puts up the database and who is incharge are some of the important questions to ask. Conclusion Change usually requires time to be successful and intervention measures need to be economically viable either through private or public funding. Also, Knowledge needs to deal with both the curent and future chalenges in fragile and resource poor contexts but not any single one of them. Important to note is that sustainable agriculture in fragile and resource poor contexts require actions at multiple levels which needs coordination between different sectors of the economy to suceed.