How do we reconcile our nutritional needs and our taste for animal-based foods with environmental sustainability?

I was intrigued to be presented this reflection of how research methods are shaped by personal agendas and preconceived ideas. It can play a central part in directing the evidence.

A workshop in Nairobi at the end of January 2017 brought together agricultural scientists from around sub-Saharan Africa, along with policy-makers, representatives of agri-businesses, grassroots organizations and policy studies networks.

UN Women writes that “Investing in women’s economic empowerment sets a direct path towards gender equality, poverty eradication and inclusive economic growth”. But is it really that simple?

The 2030 Agenda and the landscape approach paint a picture of complexity and raise a lot of challenges, but there are also a lot of benefits in pursuing an integrated way of thinking. 

Think for a second what is your image of a peasant. Poor, badly educated, non-progressive, do these adjectives come to your mind? But why does this have to be like that?

Rural people in the Sahel derive multiple benefits from local ecosystem services on a daily basis. At the same time, a large proportion of the population lives in multidimensional poverty. The global sustainability challenge is thus manifested in its one extreme here, with a strong need to improve human well-being without degrading the landscapes that people depend on.

“Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

The ASEAN countries are looking to scale up and diversify their efforts to build resilience in the agriculture sector, which faces increasingly frequent crop failures. If Thailand wants to continue to be one of the world’s top rice producers, it will need to help farmers withstand the shock of more-frequent crop failures. This is where agricultural insurance comes in.

Power distribution and poverty are important reasons of why El Niño and other natural phenomenon become “disasters” in some places but not in other.