Jeremy Cherfas

Why are many apparently simple, technical solutions to agricultural problems not widely adopted? Why don't people change their behaviour when provided with information that ought to be useful? In this episode of the Thrive podcast, Katherine Snyder from CIAT, shares her views on silver bullet solutions to dilemmas in agricultural development.

On this Thrive podcast, we discuss water rights with Tim Williams and Alan Nicol of IWMI. What are the consequences of leaving water out of large-scale land acquisition agreements? And what about another type of human right: the right to water for crops? 

Hovering over almost all of the discussions at Stockholm World Water Week was the question of climate change, and one of the few aspects of climate change we can be absolutely certain about is that things are going to become more variable. Claudia Ringler and Jeremy Bird join us on this episode of Thrive Podcast. 

On this episode of Thrive podcast, we sit down with CIAT's Dr. Deborah Bossio,  who has spent the last 20 years working at the nexus between soil and social sciences.

It is no coincidence that we're launching the Thrive podcast today, World Environment Day. The theme this year is sustainable consumption and production, and that's exactly what drives the podcast's first guest: Andrew Noble, Director of the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems.

At the end of the Water in the Anthropocene conference in May the participants issued the Bonn Declaration on Global Water Security, which sets out in stark

Fred Pearce, a noted writer on water, describes climate change as “the joker in the pack” for promoters of hydroelectric schemes. Different scientists in WLE play the joker at different stages in their research.

While other countries often have mixed priorities for their water, Pakistan has always been clear. The Indus is for irrigation. Hydropower is a secondary concern. And yet, Pakistan could also use more energy, because almost one in four households (24%) has electricity for less than six hours a day...

The water energy food nexus sounds less complicated than it is. At its heart it is the interdependence of each on the others. The five countries of Central Asia may be linked by the rivers that flow through them, but at present their governments and water management policies could scarcely be more different.

In a massive review of more than 1000 research papers on ecosystem services in Latin America – justifiably subtitling itself “the state of the art” – it is clear that across nine countries and Puerto Rico, the subject is booming.

Conventionally, we ask: what is the impact of agriculture on ecosystems? How are farming activities affecting ecosystems?