Czech delegates (9 officials) from the University of Prague and Research Institutes from Czech Republic visited Ugyen Wangchuck Institute for Forestry Research and Training (UWIFoRT) in the forenoon of Nov, 7, 2024. The delegates were from diverse scientific backgrounds including Citizen Science, Agroforestry, Dendrochronology, Natural acoustics, physical geography, Geonics and Remote Sensing. They visited the Institute to explore possible areas for collaboration between the Institutes of Bhutan and the Czech Republic.

The meeting began with a welcome note from the Officiating Head Specialist (OHS) and the introduction of all the officials. During the introduction, every official shared their interests and expertise to identify topics of mutual interest. The OHS delivered a brief presentation on the institute's mandates, achievements, and activities to sensitize the delegates and open the floor for further discussion. 

The presentation was followed by interactive question and answer session. Some of the questions put up by the delegates were as follows:

• What are the main activities of the Agroforestry Sub-center at Darla?

• How is the research that we carry out in the institute driven? Is it government-demanded research or self-interest-driven research?

• What percentage of Bhutan's forest is private forest?

• Is anyone aware of the use of Cannabis sativa in house construction and insulation?

Some of the important discussions and the way forward sparked by questions from the delegates are:

• Bhutan should focus on developing Human Resources (HR) within the country in the scientific field.  When carrying out joint research with external collaborators, we should be taking ownership of the research and the publications generated through the research.

• University in Prague, Czech Republic will look into the possibility of providing equipment to analyze tree growth to UWIFoRT.

• If a suitable candidate is identified, the University in Prague will be happy to fund the candidate for a PhD program. The candidate will do his research here in Bhutan and spend the better part of his/her PhD duration studying in Bhutan.

• If Bhutan could look into studying the country-level carbon balance in primary and old-growth forests.

• Bhutan could explore the carbon market to derive direct benefits from sequestering more carbon than we produce.

• If a candidate is interested in working with NFI data, they can explore the possibility of taking up a PhD.

• The use of LIDAR and Remote Sensing (RS) data to study forests will aid the current methods available.

• DoFPS could explore the funding possibilities from Euro Horizon projects, where the consortium will identify the topics that we can work on based on our interests and mandates.

• More work and collaboration can be done in the field of acoustics and the scope can be diversified.

• The delegates will discuss funding possibilities with UNDP, particularly from the GCF funding window, and GEF once they return to Thimphu.

• The delegates will be happy to help if required in the field of RS and they expressed their interest in working with historical terrestrial data. They also offered a PhD position in an RS-related field. 

• They have also offered a postdoc and PhD position in the dendrochronology field.

The delegation visit ended with a tour of various museums namely the Herbarium, Natural History Museum, Entomology Museum, Ethnobiology Museum and Dendrochronology Lab in UWIFoRT.