Hao Xia participated at IAMO Forum in Halle

1 July 2024, by Cäcilie Melzer

Photo: Markus Scholz © IAMO

The IAMO Forum 2024 took place from June 26-28, 2024, in Halle (Saale), Germany. This year´s conference subject of the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO) was "The Functions of Land in Times of Change: Environmental, Social, and Economic Perspectives." More than 200 participants from science, practice and politics with diverse disciplinary backgrounds got together to discuss the crucial importance of agricultural land for ecological sustainability, social justice, food security, and economic prosperity.

IAMO is dedicated to analyzing economic, social and political change processes in the agricultural and food sector, and in rural areas. The geographical focus covers the enlarging EU, transition regions of Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe, as well as Central and Eastern Asia.

Hao Xia gave a presentation titled "The Multidimensional Impact of Protected Areas for Sustainable Social-Ecological Outcomes." His talk focused on the synergies and trade-offs of the social-ecological outcomes of protected areas, providing empirical results from China. He also discussed the importance of using rigorous causal inference to understand better the effects of protected areas on nature's contributions to people and human well-being. After the presentation, Hao Xia discussed the trade-offs between conservation and food production in protected areas. The discussion focused on how we can promote conservation measures while ensuring food security and the livelihood of local communities.

The Postdoc researcher Hao Xia is a member of the Research group of Sustainability and Global Change (FNU). He is an interdisciplinary conservation geographer, trained in conservation and land system science, and ecological economics. His work provides insights into coupled human-nature systems and explores nature-based solutions. In his current work, he delves into evaluating conservation statuses and developing systematic conservation planning for a sustainable and acceptable protected tundra area network at the circum-Arctic scale. He conducts research in collaboration with Prof Uwe A. Schneider and Dr Kerstin Jantke.