A two-day Ecological Conservation in Forestry Brainstorming Workshop was held in Beijing from 2-3 December 2008 followed by a one-day field trip to Badaling Certified Forest Farm. 35 participants attended the workshop from Australian agencies, AusAID Beijing, Bureau of Rural Science of the Australian Government, Southern Cross University, New South Wales University, and Chinese agencies, State Forestry Administration (SFA), China National Forestry Economics and Development Research Centre (CNFEDRC), Beijing Municipal Forestry Bureau (BMFB),Qinghai Forestry Bureau (QFB)，Sichuan Daduhe Forestation Administration and the donor organizations and NGOs, UNDP, ADB, Wetland International, APFNet and Shanshui Conservation Centre respectively.
The objective of the workshop was to define a set of priority activities that can be proposed for funding to different bilateral and multilateral donors, including but not limited to AusAID (ACEDP, Scholarship Program, SAS, etc). During the two-day workshop, the participants discussed and identified two areas of mutual interests: tools for monitoring and evaluating ecological conservation activities and the feasibility study of carbon sequestration and ecological conservation in the forest sector.
Following the workshop, SFA in conjunction with QFB will develop the proposal according to ACEDP Funding Guidelines with the support from Australian experts, which will be submitted to ACEDP PCO in March 2009.