The European Union and its Member States spend considerable amounts of their budget on supporting Research and Development (R&D) activities. In the summer of 2019, the EU Commission announced how it would spend the last annual tranche of Horizon 2020 – a €77 billion research and innovation funding programme running since 2014. For the Commission,…
Why does public research money often fail to support sustainable and just food systems?
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 the ruling by the European Court of Justice over how to interpret EU laws bearing on the regulation of GM crops. The ruling clarifies an…
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 cannot be trusted. Open Science is all about making science work better so that it can address the world’s challenges. It has been at the…
Hot debate about biogas: lessons from Italy
A new STEPS working paper by Bianca Cavicchi and Adrian Ely examines the history of biogas as a source of energy in the region of Emilia Romagna, Northern Italy. Over the last few decades, the potential of biogas in Emilia Romagna has been explored and debated by different agencies and people. But it has not…
Brexit and development
As Britain faces the prospect of leaving the European Union, here’s a couple of blog posts on what the referendum result might mean for the UK’s role in international development. Ian Scoones on Brexit and Africa: Why Britain’s Decision to leave the EU is bad news for Africa “The decision will fundamentally affect the continent’s…