The 2nd WASWAC World Conference with theme “Threats to land and water resources in the 21st century” was held in Chiang Rai, Thailand on September 5~6, 2013, aiming at result presentation and information exchange. The WASWAC organized the conference with support by Engineering Institute of Thailand and Thammasat University of Thailand, and cooperation by Land Development Department (LDD), Nitional Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences (NIAES), Japan, and other countries’ institutes and universities. Although researchers from Europe, Africa and America attended the conference, the participants from Asia, especially East and Southeast Asia, became the protagonist of the conference. Over the two day conference, total 14 sessions have been set up, including 1) methodologies to assess the extent of land degradation, 2) soil loss and landslide, 3) debris flow, 4) sedimentation, 5) global climate change, 6) impacts of land degradation, 7) ecological aspect of land degradation and restoration, 8) SWAT achievements, 9) control measures to prevent/mitigate land degradation and for restoration, 10) integrated measures to enhance soil and water conservation, 11) water resource management, 12) law and policy, 13) farmer’s role, 14) land use change and consequences. About 70 oral reports and 50 posts have been presented. JIRCAS introduced its research outputs from the project of on-going Long-term Soil Experiment (LTES) in Thailand by comparison of soil carbon coefficient between JIRCAS experimental fields and farm lands IPCC Guideline proposes. The 3th WASWAC World Conference will be held in Serbia in 2016. World Association of Soil and Water Conservation (WASWAC), a voluntary international academic society initially at the soil and water conservation, was established in 1983, USA. Until now, the WASWAC has more than one thousand members from around the world, including Japanese researchers. It not only conducts various workshops and training programs but also publishes several publications. In 2003, the secretariat of WASWAC eventually located in Beijing after temporarily moving to Bangkok. The WASWAC agreed to organize World Conference every three years since the 1st WASWAC World Conference was taken place in Xi’an, China in 2010.

WASWAC World Conference II