Future of Sustainable Agriculture in Saline Environments

Katarzyna Negacz is a postdoctoral 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, Professor Negacz earned a 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 earned a PhD in coastal protection at Delft Technical University. 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 joined Wageningen University in 2007 as a professor in climate change. Over the years he has fulfilled many different board positions in NGOs, research programs, and 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.

Edward 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 Professor Barrett-Lennard 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. Professor Barrett-Lennard has worked in Australia (mostly), Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Iraq, and Vietnam.

Redouane Choukr-Allah is a horticultural, soil, and water environmental expert with more than 35 years of experience in the use of saline water and the use of pretreated sewage in Horticulture. He earned a PhD in environment horticulture at 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 1983 to 1996 and as head of the salinity and plant nutrition laboratory since 1996. 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 nonconventional water.

Theo Elzenga earned an MSc in biology at the University of Amsterdam and a PhD at Groningen on nutrient and CO2 acquisition by plants. After working as a postdoctoral student at Wageningen University and at the University of Washington in Seattle, he returned to Groningen, where he has held a chair in ecophysiology of plants since 2000. His teaching focuses on the adaptation and acclimation of plants to adverse conditions. He was Director of the Centre of Ecological and Evolutionary Studies, Director of the Graduate School of Ecology and Evolution, and Director of the Undergraduate School of the Faculty of Science and Engineering. He is on advisory panels on agricultural development and the safety of genetically engineered organisms.