The Asian green revolution trebled grain yields through agrochemical intensification of monocultures. Associated environmental costs have subsequently emerged. A rapidly changing world necessitates sustainability principles be developed to reinvent these technologies and test them at scale. The need is particularly urgent in Africa, where ecosystems are degrading and crop yields have stagnated.
Input subsidies need to be contemplated with caution, with a clear consideration of the costs and benefits compared with conventional best practice of addressing market failures directly and using social policies to address social objectives with respect to poverty and food insecurity.
Nearly one sixth of the global population is malnourished. The problem is particularly acute in tropical Africa, where constant or recurrent food shortages affect over 30% of the population
This programme evaluation report describes the processes of the 2009 Community-Managed Disaster Risk Reduction (CMDRR) programme as a community-driven approach, including partner training in methodology, engagement in community mobilisation, community hazard mapping, and community designed plans to reduce their disaster risks.
Forests are power bases, but often for the wrong people. As attention turns from making an international deal on REDD to making it work on the ground, the hunt will be on for practical ways of shifting power over forests towards those who enable and pursue sustainable forest-linked livelihoods.
This paper uses panel data from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Malawi to examine the impacts of disasters on dynamic human capital production. The empirical results show that accumulation of biological human capital prior to a disaster helps children maintain investments during the post-disaster period. Biological
The illegal slaughter of African elephants for ivory is now worse than it was at its peak in the 1980s. New forensic tools based on DNA analysis can help stop the cartels behind this bloody trade.
Last year the skyrocketing cost of food was a wake-up call for the planet. Between 2005 and the summer of 2008, the price of wheat and corn tripled, and the price of rice climbed fivefold, spurring food riots in nearly two dozen countries and pushing 75 million more people into poverty.
