With the official title “Rural development by landuse diversification: stakeholder based strategies and integrative technologies for agricultural landscapes in mountainous Southwest China”, the Chinese-German Cooperation Project was officially inaugurated. The kick-off workshop was held during November 29-30 in Jinghong, capital city of Xishuangbanna prefecture. Co-organized by XTBG and German University of Hohenheim, the workshop was attended by about 60 scientists and students from 14 institutes and universities of the two countries. Xishaungbanna CPC Secretary Jiang Pusheng and leaders of related government departments were present at the meeting. Six media agencies covered this workshop.

Vice governor Huang Shan of Xishuangbanna and Mr. Michael Weber, representative of German Federal Ministry of Education and Research separately delivered opening speech. Deputy Director General Qiu Juliang of CAS Bureau of International Cooperation sent congratulation letter. Head of Nanbanhe National Nature Reserve Administration gave a general overview of the nature reserve. Prof. Dr. Chen Jin of XTBG and Prof. Dr. Joachim Sauerborn of Hohenheim University, who are chief scientists of the cooperation project, gave general introduction.

  At group sessions, the scientists and scholars who specialize in Ecology, Community Economics, Community Sociology & Politics, and land use / cover diversification models had in-depth discussion and reached implementation schemes for various sections of the project. Afterwards, general implementation plan was decided at the plenary session summarizing workshop results.

 In order to make full use of data collected by each section, a standard for data sharing was set at the meeting.

 On December 1st, the participants made an on-site field trip to Nabanhe National Nature Reserve.