Nobel Prize for the World Food Programme
9/10/2020: This year's Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the UN World Food Programme. A surprising choice but the Norwegian Nobel Committee has underlined the importance of global cooperation.
Source: DW
Agro-ecology risks harming the poor and worsening gender inequality in Africa
30/7/2020: In recent years, agro-ecology has come to be seen as a virtual panacea in sub-Saharan Africa. Now an analysis of conservation agriculture experiments in Africa threatens to completely up-end this dominant paradigm.
Source: Cornell Alliance for Science
The Case for a Real Restructuring of Global Ag-Research Centres
22/7/2020: A group of experts comments on proposals to merge the CGIAR’s 15 legally-independent centres, headquartered in 15 countries, into one legal entity. The impetus has come from some of its biggest funders, notably the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank, and the US and UK governments.
Source: Inter Press Service
Arctic seed vault gets new crops
25/2/2020: A “Noah’s Ark” vault in the Norwegian Arctic, designed to safeguard the world’s crops, expects to restore the collection back to more than a million varieties.
Source: Climate Home News
Biodiversity is not just an environmental issue
17/10/2019: An interview with IPBES ex-chair Robert Watson discusses the importance of biodiversity to global development and economics.
Source: Mongabay
Brazil guts environmental agencies, clearing way for unchecked deforestation
10/6/2019: Recent developments illustrate the extent to which the country’s environmental policies and law enforcement agencies are being dismantled by the government of President Jair Bolsonaro. Source: Mongabay
Malaysia calls on SE Asia to back palm oil against ‘unfair’ claims
3/5/2019: The Malaysian government has called on its neighbours to help defend the palm oil industry against what it deems a discriminative campaign by the European Union to stop recognizing the commodity as a biofuel ingredient.
Source: Mongabay
The world lost a Belgium-sized area of primary rainforest in 2018
25/4/2019: The tropics lost 12 million hectares of tree cover in 2018, including 3.6 million hectares of primary rainforests - which store more carbon than other forests and are irreplaceable when it comes to sustaining biodiversity.
Source: World Resources Institute
How trade fells trees in Brazil and Indonesia
17/4/2019: Research has found that 29-39% of the carbon dioxide released through deforestation is driven by international trade — with farmers felling forests to clear space for croplands, pastures and plantations that grow goods often consumed abroad.
Source: DW
Questions remain as Vietnam reaches major REDD+ milestone
1/4/2019: In late 2018, Vietnam became the first Asia-Pacific country to reach eligibility for results-based carbon reduction payments under the UN-REDD Program, fulfilling its safeguard requirements.
Source: Mongabay