Photo: Jatropha curcas – the biofuel plant from tonrulkens’ photostream on Flickr Our director Melissa Leach is giving the first Annual Piers Blaikie Lecture on Environmental Politics at the University…
EVERYONE’S A WINNER (EXCEPT IF YOU’RE NOT…)
A NEW LEADER AND A NEW BEGINNING FOR THE UN FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANISATION?
By John Thompson, co-convenor, STEPS Centre food and agriculture domain and joint coordinator, Future Agricultures Consortium The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) chose Brazil’s José…
A MISSED OPPORTUNITY: THE G-20 ACTION PLAN ON FOOD PRICE VOLATILITY AND AGRICULTURE
By John Thompson, co-convenor, STEPS Centre food and agriculture domain and joint coordinator, Future Agricultures Consortium The Group of Twenty (G-20), comprised of the world’s 19 largest economies, plus the…
INEQUALITY AND FOOD: 10 TASKS FOR THE UK GOVERNMENT
by Erik Millstone, STEPS Centre Food and Agriculture co-convenor There are massive inequalities between industrialised and developing countries, and they have widened over the past 15 years, but there are…
THE MANIFESTO: ONE YEAR ON
By Adrian Ely, Manifesto project convenor Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A New Manifesto is a year old! It’s been a busy year. In the time since the launch of the Manifesto,…
RISKY ADVICE AND UNCERTAINTY
Andy Stirling, STEPS Director and Alister Scott, visiting fellow at SPRU, have an article up at Project Syndicate (and on the Al Jazeera website) on recent technological disasters (Fukushima, BP…
“GOLDEN RICE”: A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY?
by Sally Brooks, Biosafety project convenor Biofortified crops, for example rice enriched with vitamin A, are claimed as a way of getting vital extra nutrition to poor people. They’ve also…
FILM: “SEEDS AND SUSTAINABILITY” OUT NOW
Our new film, “Seeds and Sustainability: Maize pathways in Kenya”, explores how to secure seeds for farmers growing maize – Kenya’s key staple crop – in drought-prone regions of the…
DIVERSITY, DISTRIBUTION AND DEVELOPMENT THROUGH KNOWLEDGE, NETWORKS AND NATIONS
By Melissa Leach, STEPS Centre director A new report by the Royal Society surveys the global scientific landscape in 2011, noting the shift to an increasingly multipolar world underpinned by…
ANDY STIRLING ON SCIENCE & SCEPTICISM
After the UK Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, John Beddington, called for scientists to be “grossly intolerant” of pseudo-science The point is that the basic aspirational principles of science offer the…