China and Germany recently inaugurated a Sino-German cooperative project entitled Rural Development by Landuse Diversification: Stakeholder-based Strategies and Integrative Technologies for Agricultural Landscapes in Mountainous Southwest China.

Its kick-off workshop was held on Nov. 29 and 30 in Jinghong, capital city of Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture in Southwest China Yunnan Province. Co-organized by the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and German University of Hohenheim, the workshop brought together about 60 scientists and students from 14 institutes and universities of the two countries.

Huang Shan, vice governor of the prefecture and Mr. Michael Weber, representative of German Federal Ministry of Education and Research addressed the opening of the workshop. Chief scientists of the cooperation project, Prof. Dr. Chen Jin, XTBG director and Prof. Dr. Joachim Sauerborn of Hohenheim University each gave a general introduction to the forthcoming studies.

At group sessions, the scientists and scholars who specialize in ecology, community economics, community sociology and politics, and land use/cover diversification models had in-depth discussions and reached a consensus on implementation schemes for various sections of the project. Afterwards, a general implementation plan was worked out at the plenary session for workshop result summarization.