Flag of Europe as a round plate with knife and fork

Is the new European ruling on GM techniques ‘anti-science’?

Frontstage rhetorics, backstage forces in current debates around the European Court of Justice ruling on GM crops There has been much commotion in the media over the past week, following…

Green fields with grazing animals

In South Africa’s land reform, class matters

In South Africa’s former ‘homelands’ the government is trying to ‘revive’ agriculture. These areas are a legacy of the 1913 and 1936 land acts, which reserved only 13% of the…

A car drives on a mountain road with clouds of smoke in the background

What do we do about the heatwave?

The heatwave has turned deadly. Tinder-dry fields and forests in Europe, most dramatically in Greece, have burst into flames, with catastrophic results. Crops are failing; for some, the health risks…

Three projects that explore open and collaborative production

Over the last decade, radically open and collaborative forms of producing knowledge and material artifacts have been gaining ground, accelerated by the advance of new technologies. Researchers from STEPS Latin…

Round icon with colours representing the Sustainable Development Goals

How can the Sustainable Development Goals be transformative?

The theme of this year’s High-level Political Forum on sustainable development is “Transformation towards sustainable and resilient societies.” The HLPF meets every year to review progress towards the Sustainable Development…

A colourful chart showing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals

Democratizing public health and urban sustainability: how can nexus framings be useful?

By Saurabh Arora (SPRU, University of Sussex, UK) and Leandro Giatti (SPH, USP, Brazil) Public health and urban sustainability are inextricably linked. The World Health Organization (WHO) has emphasized this, drawing…

Sheet with diagrams and writing

Living Aulas: What connects ‘undisciplinary’ research on sustainability?

by Almendra Cremaschi and Rebecca Shelton, Pathways Network In the context of climate change and the rise of research about and towards transformations to sustainability, being an early career researcher…

People praying in

Why politics has to be at the heart of any response to zoonoses

World Zoonoses Day, on July 6 every year, is a reminder of the continuing problem of emerging diseases, particularly those originating in animals. Zoonoses have dominated policy debates in the…

Are Elsevier corrupting open science in Europe?

Elsevier – one of the largest and most notorious scholarly publishers – are monitoring Open Science in the EU on behalf of the European Commission. Jon Tennant argues that they…