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Opening Address
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Jorge Sampaio
United Nations High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations
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The aim of the Alliance is to support, through a network of partnerships, the development of projects that promote understanding and reconciliation among cultures globally and, in particular, between Muslim and Western societies.
Jorge Sampaio, a former President of the Republic, is a well known individuality in Portugal and has an internationally outstanding political career with a particular attention to social and cultural affairs.
He was Member of Parliament (1979-95), Mayor of Lisbon (1989-95), Member of the European Human Rights Commission of the Council of Europe (1979-84). From 1990 to 1995 he was President of the Union of Portuguese-speaking Cities (UCCLA) and in 1990 was elected Vice-President of the Union of Iberian-American Cities. He was also elected President of the Eurocities Movement (1990) and President of the World Federation of United Cities (1992).
Jorge Sampaio was elected President of the Republic of Portugal in 1996 and re-elected for a second term in 2001.
In May 2006 he was appointed by Kofi Anann as the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy to Stop TB and in April 2007 was appointed by Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General, as UN High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations.
In February 2007, he was designated Chairman of the Consultative Council of the University of Lisbon. He holds several Portuguese and Foreign Honours and Awards including the European Prize Carlos V, in 2004.
For further information go to http://jorgesampaio.pt/jorgesampaio/en
COLLOQUIUM
Horticultural Science for the Millennium Development Objectives
Introduction to the Colloquium
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Chairperson: Norman Looney
President of the ISHS
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Horticultural Science and the Millennium Development Goals
Meeting an ever increasing global demand for food, with a finite land resource and an increasingly problematic production environment, will require both the ingenuity of science and a richly stocked storehouse of genetic resources. Horticultural scientists and educators harbour a deep concern about the issues of hunger and rural poverty identified by the UN Millennium Development Goals and they recognize that horticultural science and industry can contribute importantly to improving both health and livelihoods of the world’s poor.
This Colloquium will address that potential from two perspectives. The first will be to focus on the economic botany of horticulture; on the impressive array of plants that can be utilized now or in the future to nurture and nourish the world’s poor. Dr. Cary Fowler, Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, will call attention to the responsibility of horticultural science and industry to identify, describe, utilize, and protect from loss the broadest possible range of genera, species and cultivars of horticultural plants.
The second perspective comes from renowned European molecular biologist, Dr. Pere Puigdomènech. He will address the potential of genomics and others tools and products of molecular biology to achieve the gains in crop productivity, adaptability, and quality that will be needed to support an additional three billion people by mid-century; and do this without exacerbating the loss of habitats where potentially useful horticultural plant genetic resources remain undiscovered or under-utilized. He will also reflect on how these new tools and gene-altered products must earn public acceptance if they are to achieve their full potential.
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Cary Fowler
Executive Director, The Global Crop Diversity Trust
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Short biography
Dr. Cary Fowler was Professor and Director of Research in the Department for International Environment & Development Studies at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and also Senior Advisor to the Director General of Bioversity International.
Cary's career in the conservation and use of crop diversity spans 30 years. He was Program Director for the National Sharecroppers Fund / Rural Advancement Fund, a US-based NGO engaged in plant genetic resources education and advocacy.
In 1985 he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award (the "Alternative Nobel Prize"). In the 1990s, he headed the International Conference and Programme on Plant Genetic Resources at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). He drafted and supervised negotiations of FAO's Global Plan of Action for Plant Genetic Resources, adopted by 150 countries in 1996. That same year he served as Special Assistant to the Secretary General of the World Food Summit. He is a past-member of the National Plant Genetic Resources Board of the U.S. and the Board of Trustees of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico, and is currently Chair of the International Advisory Council of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. He holds a position as Associate Curator at the Memphis City Family of Museums.
executivedirector@croptrust.org
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Pere Puigdoménech Rosell
Institute of Molecular Biology, CID-CSIC, Barcelona, Spain
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Short biography
Research Professor at the Department for Molecular Genetics, Director of Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics, CSIC-IRTA-UAB, Barcelona, Spain.
Studies in Physics (University of Barcelona, 1970). Thèse de l'Université, mention Chimie Physique (Montpellier, France, 1974). Ph.D. in Biology (Autonomous University of Barcelona, 1975). Postdoctoral at Biophysics Laboratory, Portsmouth Polytechnic, UK and Max-Planck-Institut für Molekulare Genetik, Berlin, Germany.
Research fellow at the Departament de Genètica Molecular, Centre d'Investigació i Desenvolupament (since 1981); Presently Profesor de Investigación del CSIC, Departament de Genètica Molecular and Director, Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics, CSIC-IRTA-UAB
Member of Academia Europaea and EMBO. Member of Institut d’Estudis Catalans and the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona and corresponding member of Académie d’Agriculture de France. Member of the Commission on Biology and Society, European Science Foundation (2000-2001); Member of the Consultative Forum on Biotechnology USA-EU (2000); Member of the Scientific Steering Committee, European Union (2000-2002); Member of the European Group of Ethics of Sciences and New Technologies (2002-2010), Chairman of the Ethics Committee of CSIC (2008-); Narcís Monturiol Medal (1992); Award of the Fundació Catalana per la Recerca (2000); Main research subjects: Plant molecular Biology and Genomics, Gene regulation mechanisms. Funded by Spanish and European Agencies in collaboration with public and private groups, coordinator of the Spanish Cucurbit Genomics Project (2008-2012).
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