Name:  Vanika Bajaj
Affiliation:  Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, India 
Journal Title:  All About LULUCF!
Date:  10rd August 2022


The day started with lecture by Professor Pil Joo Kim from Gyeonsang National University. The topic of the lecture was Organic Amendments to Paddy/Rice. The main take way from the lecture was that Agriculture could be one of the potential sources of CO2 and non-CO2 gases if amendments are not made in practices used in Agriculture. Mr. Kim introduced various organic methods specially in the rice and paddy by which the carbon content in soil can be increased.


Photo 1: Lecture with Mr. Pil Joo Kim

The second part of his lecture was focused on calculating emissions in Agriculture sector as per 2006 IPCC guidelines. He discussed about non-CO2 emissions from the agriculture sector, both direct emissions and indirect emissions. He discussed about the importance of CO2, Nitrogen and Phosphorous in the agriculture sector and plant growth. The direct emissions are N2O emissions from application of fertilizers and indirect emissions sources are due to volatilization and leaching of nitrogen. The uptake of Nitrogen by plants results in the release of Nitrogen Oxide emissions which is one of the most potential GHG gases having a GWP of 298. This makes the reduction of these emissions immensely important in the agriculture sector. One of the ways to reduce N20 emissions discussed was to coat the urea(fertilizer) with certain substances which releases the fertilizer slowly instead of fast release of urea in the soils.


Photo 2: Lecture by Mr. Jong-Su Yim

After lunch, the lecture was delivered by Professor Jong-Su Yim on LULUCF sector. We discussed Korea as a case study for GHG emissions in LULUCF sector. Mr. Yim explained 2006 IPCC guidelines on LULUCF step by step. He also gave an overview of the mitigation actions such as Sustainable Forest Management etc. After the presentation on LULUCF sector, there were country presentations on LULUCF by Panama, Tonga and Malaysia. The trainees from three countries shared their experiences from countries. It was an insightful experience to learn about the emissions in forestry sector and mitigation actions adopted by three countries. One of the Noteworthy programmes was the Forest Enrichment Program in Malaysia which is aimed to promote Sustainable Forest Management in Malyasia.


Photo 3: Country Presentation by Vincent Woon Kok Sin - Malaysia






Coordinator's comments:
A round of applause to you Vanika and Vincent. I appreciate Vincent’s informative presentation on the forestry sector, specifically Malaysia’s mitigation efforts which include the Forest Enrichment Program, and at the same time it is impressive that you did not miss a chance to take a note on good practices of Malaysia which is exactly what peer to peer learning between trainees in practice is.
This training programme’s primary goal is, as you may know very well by now, to enhance trainees’ capacity through lectures by international experts, but another goal that is never less significant is to encourage participants from all over the world to learn from each other by looking into exemplary climate actions taken by different countries. In this regard, I am very happy as a coordinator to see you effectively used your time in Korea to learn and gain what you need to further broaden your understanding and experiences as much as you can during the programme. Good on you, Vanika!