The Land and Plant Nutrition Management Service (AGLL) of FAO would like to invite you to participate in an Electronic Expert Consultation on "Land Management, Food Security and Carbon Sequestration in Drylands" .

This consultation is an activity of the joint FAO/Global Mechanism Programme on “Carbon Sequestration Incentive Mechanisms to Combat Land Degradation and Desertification”. The programme is being implemented in collaboration with :

the Global Mechanism of the UNCCD;
the Centre for Environment and Society of the University of Essex, UK;
the Centre for Environmental Studies of Lund University, Sweden;
the Environmental Programme/Department of Geography, Trent University, Canada.

The consultation will be conducted via Internet. Its purpose is to identify the critical issues and potential for soil rehabilitation and soil carbon sequestration under different land use types and management practices in agricultural drylands. It will be used for further data collection related to soil carbon sequestration and to institutions involved.

The consultation website contains a concise and straightforward questionnaire, background materials and links to sites with related documents.

The consultation will take place from 24 May to 30 June 2002.

Participants, and their institutions will be co-authors and will receive the report produced with the information gathered through the questionnaire. All concerned will also be kept informed about other achievements and outputs of the Programme.

To register through internet, please open the following site:

http://www.natgeo.lu.se/carbonform

If you wish to participate through e-mail, fax or post, please send a blank e-mail to this address carbon.eng@iis.natgeo.lu.se and you will automatically receive the questionnaire as a text file. This questionnaire can be returned by e-mail, fax or post.

We are pleased to invite you to participate as an active partner in this collaborative effort.

Parviz Koohafkan
Chief, Land and Plant Nutrition Management Service
Land and Water Development Division
Tel:(0039) 0657053843
Fax:(0039) 0657056275