Future of Sustainable Agriculture in Saline Environments

Katarzyna (Kate) Negacz is a post-doctoral researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and cooperates with Wadden Academy. For more than 12 years she has been involved in research and practice related to sustainable development. After completing her studies in economics and law, Katarzyna Negacz obtained her doctoral degree in environmental economics at the Warsaw School of Economics for her research on the evolution of green consumption in Taiwan. She conducted research in Switzerland, Poland, Spain, Taiwan, Germany and the Netherlands. Her current research focuses on the potential of saline degraded lands for sustainable food production and transnational biodiversity governance. Pier Vellinga (1950, the Netherlands) graduated at Delft Technical University (1976) with a PhD in coastal protection (1984). He has a chair on climate change at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam since 1990. His teaching, research and publications (about 200) focus on the implications of climate change regarding water, energy and food. He also joined Wageningen University in 2007 as professor in Climate Change. Over the years he has fulfilled many different board positions in NGOs, research programs, UN, EU and governmental committees and financial institutions. For 30 years he has been advisor to the Venice Water Authorities on the protection of Venice and its lagoon, a work successfully completed in 2020. Ed Barrett-Lennard works in the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) of Western Australia, Murdoch University and The University of Western Australia. For more than 35 years Ed has been a passionate researcher and advocate of the need to develop saline agricultural farming systems in response to landscape salinization and climate change.  His interests lie at the intersection between practical agriculture, agronomy, soil science and ecophysiology. He is the author/editor of four books, more than 70 papers and numerous other publications.  Ed has worked in Australia (mostly) and Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Iraq and Vietnam. Redoune Choukr-Allah is a horticultural, soil and water environmental expert with more than 35 years of experience in in the use of saline water and the use of pre-treated sewage in Horticulture. He holds a PhD in environment Horticulture from the University of Minnesota, St Paul USA. He also served as a technical coordinator of a 12 Million project, financed by USAID on the water resources sustainability in morocco.He served as head of the Horticulture Department from the period 1983 to 1996, and a head of the salinity and plant nutrition laboratory since 1996 and he served at ICBA as a senior fellow scientist in Horticulture and a Section Head of Crop Diversification and Genetics. He has produced numerous publications, including edited books, research reports, articles in peer-reviewed international journals and books in the field of non-conventional water. Theo Elzenga (1956, The Netherlands) is a University of Amsterdam student, who after obtaining his MSc in Biology, moved to Groningen for his PhD on nutrient and CO2 acquisition by plants. After working as a postdoc at the Wageningen University and at the University of Washington in Seattle, he moved back to Groningen where he holds a chair in Ecophysiology of Plants since 2000. His teaching is focused on the adaptation and acclimation of plants to adverse condition. He was director of the Centre of Ecological and Evolutionary studies, director of the graduate school Ecology and Evolution, director of the undergraduate school of the Faculty of Science and Engineering. He is acting in advisory panels on agricultural development and the safety of genetically engineered organisms.