Leading research institutions from Norway and Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) will now cooperate on six projects to study climate and environment issues. Up to NOK 45 million is available for allocation from the Research Council of Norway (RCN), with a corresponding amount of support available from the CAS. This is the first time Norway is cooperating on research with China on such a large scale.
The RCN and CAS issued the joint call for proposals in June 2010 which is a remarkable achievement in the partnership between the two sides. This joint call is also a follow-up of the November 2008 agreement to expand Norway’s cooperation with China on research and technology, signed in Beijing by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology and the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research and a series of seminars held afterwards.
Researchers from the University of Oslo, University of Bergen, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norwegian Institute for Air Research, SINTEF and CICERO will work together with their Chinese counterparts from the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Institute of Atmospheric Physics and State Key Laboratory of Environmental Chemistry to implement six projects. They won this project support in a strong competition out of 27 applications ranked by an international evaluation team. The projects, among other things, will focus on how climate change affects food production, how forests are affected by nitrogen and if new nano matter will pollute water organisms.
Norway and China share many common interests as well as a long tradition of open and positive cooperation on research and cooperation. The success of this joint call for proposals will become a breakthrough in formal research cooperation between Norway and China.
Mrs. Kari Kveseth, Counsellor of Science and Higher Education with the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Beijing, underlines that this first joint call between RCN and CAS as an important step in following up the research agreement signed between the two countries in 2008. CAS is one of the most important players in China, and increased cooperation has a great potential for the two countries in the environmental field as well as within energy technology and several other technological areas.