Showing 1 - 10 of 27
How to feed the world's ten billion people
Oped, Yurdi Yasmi, Published on 22/01/2026
» With the world struggling to feed eight billion people today, how will we feed ten billion by 2050?
FAO at 80: feeding the future
News, Qu Dongyu, Published on 16/10/2025
» This year's World Food Day marks 80 years since the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), whose mandate from the outset has been to ensure humanity's freedom from want.
The loveliness of a flying beetle
Roger Crutchley, Published on 20/07/2025
» The recent cricket match between England and India at Lord's was reportedly briefly delayed by a swarm of ladybirds which were bothering the players. It is believed to be the first recorded instance of "ladybirds stopped play". More importantly, swarm is not the correct term for these flying beetles. The collective noun for ladybirds (ladybugs for our American friends) is a "loveliness".
Donor funding crisis goes global
News, Jayati Ghosh, Published on 21/05/2025
» Towards the end of the ancient Indian epic the Mahabharata, Krishna's Yadava clan self-destructs. Many dark omens presage their downfall: nature behaves erratically and pests multiply. Sin, deception, and violence proliferate, eroding trust and solidarity. Clan members humiliate and insult wise elders. When Krishna's extended family goes on a picnic, the men get drunk, argue, and attack each other, until eventually all of them are dead.
Tit-for-tat tariffs as Trump escalates trade war
News, Kate Sullivan & Josh Wingrove, Published on 08/03/2025
» US President Donald Trump delivered on his threat to hit Canada and Mexico with sweeping import levies and doubled an existing charge on China, spurring swift reprisals that plunged the world economy into a deepening trade war. Yesterday, Mr Trump backtracked and postponed Canada and Mexico tariffs for a month.
Seed bomb threat to forest ecology
Editorial, Published on 01/09/2024
» Despite public concern over invasive species like the blackchin tilapia, which is rapidly spreading and threatening river and marine ecosystems nationwide, forest authorities are now putting rainforests at risk by seed bombing with non-native species. This reckless action must stop.
Technology brings SDG goals closer
News, Zhimin Wu, Published on 22/07/2024
» In the face of escalating threats to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, the global community stands at a crossroads.
The toxic legacy left by the Green Revolution
Oped, Jayati Ghosh, Published on 15/02/2024
» There are more than 390,000 identified plant species in the world, but just three -- rice, maize, and wheat -- account for roughly 60% of the plant-based calories in our diets. The dominance of these three grains is largely the result of major technological breakthroughs, particularly the development of high-yielding varieties (HYVs) of rice and wheat during the Green Revolution of the 1960s.
Time to be the agents of change
News, Qu Dongyu, Published on 12/02/2024
» We all know that we live in a changing world. In the vast area of Asia and the Pacific that change is most evident. Over the past 20 years, the economies of many nations in the region have been moving out of the category of "least developed" and graduating into a "middle income" status. However, the positive changes that help to make our lives better, healthier, and more prosperous, are not happening at the same time equally across all countries, or even equitably within them.
Mitigating climate change impacts
News, Qu Dongyu, Published on 07/12/2023
» Growing up on a small rice farm in China in the 1960's, my family was keenly aware that any single adverse weather event could wipe out a year's worth of effort. The climate and weather patterns are something a farmer feels in his bones, but changes in these patterns and the extremity of events have, in recent years, shocked rural communities. We never imagined seasons might alter at the pace and scale we see today, bringing losses and damage that undermine years of hard-won rural development.