GFAR PhD candidate, Sitti Rahma Ma’Mun, recently participated in the International Conference and the 65th International Executive Council (IEC) Meeting of the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID) in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. The conference theme was “Innovative and Sustainable Agri-Water Management: Adapting to a variable and changing climate”.
Opening ceremony of ICID 2018
The ICID 2018 International Conference was aimed to bring together professionals, experts, researchers, private sectors and the irrigators to make a collaborative effort to achieve ICID vision, ‘water security without poverty and hunger’. According to the committee, more than 510 delegations from forty-one countries participated in the conference. Issues on agricultural water management were covered from different perspectives and disciplines, and presented in more than 100 papers and posters all together.
The conference and IEC meeting was opened with welcome speeches from key figures who represented the Government of Canada and Saskatchewan province, President of ICID, and the Major of Saskatoon. The conference was continued with plenary session with three key note speakers. First, Dr. John Pomeroy, Director of Global Water Futures Program of the University of Saskatchewan, presented his paper ‘Agricultural Water Futures in an era of Changing Agriculture and Climate’, in which he discuss some key challenges posed by the changing climate and how Canadian water security strategy can benefit from addressing these challenges. The second presentation about ‘Reflection on Water Management for More Productive and Resilient Agriculture’ was delivered by Dr. Peter McCornick, Executive Director of the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute at the University of Nebraska. He talked about the challenge of feeding the growing population necessitated an effective water governance to ensure a more productive and resilient agriculture. The last talk was delivered by Dr. Maurice Moloney, Executive Director and CEO of the Global Institute for Food Security. In his talk, Dr. Moloney discussed about the role of Biotechnology and shared their experiment in biotechnology in his presentation on Climate Smart Crop: delivering global food security in the era of climate change.
ICID plenary session by Dr. John Pomeroy
The conference continued with six parallel sessions on Social economic value of irrigation; Climate change and its impact on agriculture, irrigation, and drainage; Water reuse and water quality management; Water food energy nexus; Irrigation and water resources management in trans-boundary basins; and Managing competing water demands. During the three days conference from 13 to 15 August, there was also exhibition that representing government, industry, academia, NGOs, national committees and host countries for the next ICID forum.
Sitti Rahma Ma’mun receiving the Platinum Student Award
Rahma presented her paper ‘Alternative institutional arrangements for sustainable irrigation in Indonesia’ on the second day of the conference. This paper is part of her PhD research that was based on the study of local water user association (WUA) from six villages in Southeast Sulawesi, one of the eastern provinces of Indonesia. The study focus on how the WUAs manage the irrigation water and how they cope with seasonal scarcity of irrigation water. The presentation won Platinum Student Award. The award was given based on extended abstract which contain the quality of originality, contribution to the knowledge related to the Conference theme, technical and analytical quality, and clarity of oral presentation. The award was presented during the closing ceremony of the ICID 2018 conference.
The conference closed with series of traditional dancing from the native of North America. The next ICID conference will be held in Bali Indonesia, in September 2019.
