Special Master’s degree enables students to learn about the nexus of climate change, agriculture and food security.
The National University of Ireland Galway (NUI Galway [1]), in partnership with the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), is offering a Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security master’s degree program (MScCCAFS [2]). The program aims to provide graduate students in-depth knowledge on the synergy of climate change with agriculture and food security in a global setting. To apply what they learn in classes, students are exposed to real-life settings, including research projects in different parts of the world focusing on adaptation and mitigation strategies.
This year, eight MScCCAFS students went to Vietnam to research about the various angles of climate-smart agriculture (CSA [3]) for their graduate theses. Some of them studied alternate wetting and drying (AWD [4]) and climate-smart pest management [5]. Other students focused on participatory selection of rice varieties, CSA prioritization, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions monitoring tools. They conducted their researches under the technical supervision of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI [6]), International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT [7]), and the Vietnam National University of Agriculture (VNUA [8]).
Photo: E. Bernardo (CCAFS SEA)