East African Center for Natural Resources and Environment
Foreign partner: University of Lay Adventists of Kigali (UNILAK), Rwanda
The Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, CAS, and the University of Lay Adventists of Kigali (UNILAK, the former Independent Institute of Lay Adventists of Kigali), started academic exchanges and cooperation in 2010. In March 2012, a memorandum of understanding on bilateral cooperative research was signed. In July of the same year, a bilateral strategic partnership agreement was signed to establish the East African Center for Natural Resources and Environment.
The center has a 3,000 square-meter experimental center building in UNILAK, with a master's program in environmental science and three laboratories respectively for water environment, soil environment and geographic information system. Since 2013, the two sides have jointly held the international conference on "Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development" every year. XIEG has recruited and is currently training nearly 20 Rwandese doctoral and master students. It has carried out cooperative research on disaster early warning, clean drinking water, vegetation distribution, corn productivity and the impact of agricultural activities on environment and water quality in Rwanda. It has also collected some meteorological, hydrological, water quality and remote sensing image data, and made a series of achievements. Based on the requirements of building an international scientific cooperation and innovation platform integrating earth-observation from space, field long-term located monitoring and indoor analysis and testing, the joint research center will cooperate closely with scientific research institutions in East African countries such as Rwanda, so as to gradually build itself into a comprehensive platform for data integration, scientific research, experimental demonstration, professional training, exchanges and cooperation. In addition, It will also strive to be an integrated demonstration area of natural disaster prevention and clean drinking water technology, and of degraded grassland restoration and utilization technology, as well as a joint experimental center.
Chinese contact: Li Lanhai
Contact information: lilh@ms.xjb.ac.cn
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