Governance and policy blog posts

No country in the world runs its economy without subsidies. Even avowedly free market states, like the US, are awash with financial fillips for everything from agriculture to green energy. Just how effective these cash comforters are at delivering public goods, however, is hugely debateable.

How can we best protect forests for the myriad ecosystem services they provide – capturing and storing carbon, protecting river systems and soils, maintaining biodiversity and ensuring access to bushmeat? The presumption is that the local forest dwellers and users have to be kept out. But that increasingly looks like exactly the wrong approach.

As global demands for food and biofuel escalate, foreign investors have shown a keen interest in African land. The furious pace at which large-scale land acquisition investments are occurring have raised questions about the underlying motives, benefits and long-term impacts of these investments on host countries.

The recommendations outlined in this post were shared with India's Finance Minister during pre-budget consultations. The budget speech earmarked ~ USD 67 million for a new scheme to promote solar-power driven agricultural pumps. How the scheme will be implemented will be clear in the coming days.

During a “Dragon’s Den” session in Nairobi, researchers and communicators pitched policy recommendations to a panel who provided candid, straightforward and constructive feedback. “If you can’t explain your science to a policymaker, you aren’t going to do any science that’s going to make any difference to anyone,” said panelist Alex Awiti.

In 2009, businesses and farmers operating in Naivasha received a rude wake up call. Lake Naivasha almost dried up. In a basin that supports over 60% of Kenya’s flower industry, accounting for over 1% of the country’s GDP, policy makers and businesses were quick to respond.

Of all the causes of the horrendous on-going civil war in Syria, the one that is least discussed is water. It may be a stretch to call the conflict a water war. But, as Brian Richter notes in his book Chasing Water, years of drought in Syria have "created a tinderbox for revolt" as wells run dry and food prices in local markets soar.

Groundwater is the mainstay of irrigated agriculture in India. Hundreds of millions of smallholders depend on it for their livelihoods. These livelihoods, however, face serious threats from rapidly falling water tables in large parts of the country. What do farmers do when the wells run dry?

The homogenisation of global food supplies, and therefore of agricultural fields, makes agriculture more vulnerable to major threats like drought, insect pests and diseases, which are likely to become more severe as a result of climate change.

Managing a landscape begins much like a dance. But in integrated landscape management there are far more than two partners, and it is an ongoing challenge to balance different objectives and coordinate interests into one coherent set of activities.

Voluntary sustainability standards focus on farm-scale best management practices, but landscape-scale changes matter more for biodiversity conservation (e.g. reducing habitat fragmentation).

From April 28 - May 31, 2014 the Agriculture and Ecosystems Blog will feature blog posts that focus on key resilience concepts in agricultural systems.