12 Items

Report - Brookings Institution

Foresight Africa: Top Priorities for the Continent in 2014

| January 2014

As Africa's position in the world continues to grow and evolve in 2014, the Brookings Africa Growth Initiative continues its tradition of asking its experts and colleagues to identify what they consider to be the key issues for Africa in the coming year.

Harvard Development Expert: Agricultural Innovation Offers Path to Overcome Hunger

Photo by Martha Stewart

Press Release - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Harvard Development Expert: Agricultural Innovation Offers Path to Overcome Hunger

| June 3, 2013

The world can only meet its future food needs through innovation, including the use of agricultural biotechnology, Belfer Center development specialist Calestous Juma said in an address to graduates of McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

Since their commercial debut in the mid-1990s, genetically designed crops have added about $100 billion to world crop output, avoided massive pesticide use and greenhouse gas emissions, spared vast tracts of land and fed millions of additional people worldwide, Juma said during the graduation ceremony where he received an honorary doctorate. He asked the graduates to embrace innovative sciences that alone will make it possible to feed the billions who will swell world population in decades ahead, especially in developing countries.

Magazine Article - Outreach

Profile: Calestous Juma

| December 15, 2011

"The Rio+20 process is an important reminder of the urgency to guide global production and consumption patterns with sustainability principles. Sadly, there is really no genuine global institution that is championing sustainable development. The vision that inspired Rio has been supplanted by two extreme positions. The first is a group that believes economic growth will have trickle-down benefits for the environment. The environmental camp has successfully replaced the spirit of Rio with a one-sided agenda that leaves little room for recognising the central role that human wellbeing plays in natural resource management."

Delegate from Chad Mariam Hattahir, left, casts her ballot at the 37th Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Conference in Rome, June 26, 2011. Brazil’s Jose Graziano da Silva was elected director-general of the UN's FAO.

AP Photo

Analysis & Opinions - The Guardian

Graziano's Five Major Challenges

| July 4, 2011

"Addressing this triple challenge (more food, less hunger, less environmental degradation) will require more than just funding. For the FAO to continue to serve as the world's leading authority on food and agriculture policy, it will need to reinvent itself, becoming a thought leader in ending the hunger of ideas on how to end hunger. For example, what is the role of advance market purchasing in hunger reduction? What should be done about foreign direct investment in agriculture and large-scale land acquisitions? How should food price spikes be managed? What are the benefits and risks of emerging food and agricultural technologies? The FAO needs to be leading the debates in these and other areas."

Book Chapter

Conclusions and the Way Ahead

| January 2011

A new economic vision for Africa's agricultural transformation— articulated at the highest level of government through Africa's Regional Economic Communities (RECs)—should be guided by new conceptual frameworks that define the continent as a learning society. This shift will entail placing policy emphasis on emerging opportunities such as renewing infrastructure, building human capabilities, stimulating agribusiness development, and increasing participation in the global economy. It also requires an appreciation of emerging challenges such as climate change and how they might influence current and future economic strategies.

Calestous Juma observes tissue culture propogation of bananas at a genetics technology lab in Nairobi, Kenya.

GTIL

- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center Newsletter

Agricultural Innovation in Africa: Addressing Climate-Smart Growth

| Winter 2009-10

The Belfer Center's new Agriculture Innovation in Africa project will work to address the dual challenges of climate change and food shortages with the help of a generous grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Women who are riding a donkey take on some water in Lake Chad, Nov. 25, 2006. The lake that once provided adequate livelihoods for 20 million people in west-central Africa, has lost 90 percent of its surface area in 30 years.

AP Photo

Analysis & Opinions - The Daily Nation

Climate Change a Stumbling Block to Africa's Economies

| September 15, 2009

According to the World Development Report 2010: Development and Climate Change, ... a two-degree Celsius warming above pre-industrial levels could permanently reduce Africa's annual per capita consumption by four to five per cent....The report calls on industrialised countries, which have released most of the greenhouse gases, to lead the way in charting a new low-carbon economic path. In addition, the report calls for financial support to enable developing countries adapt to climate change and lay the foundation for low-carbon economies.

- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Belfer Center Newsletter Winter 2008-09

| Winter 2008-09

The Winter 2008-09 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming research, activities, and analysis by Center faculty, fellows, and staff on critical global issues. "What should the next president do first?" is a question raised in this issue. Belfer Center experts respond to the question with advice on what they consider priority issues of national security, climate/energy policy, and the economic crisis.

The Winter 2008-09 issue also features take-aways from the Center’s recent “Acting in Time on Energy Policy” conference hosted by the Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group. In addition, it spotlights Belfer Center Faculty Affiliate Richard Clarkeand new Kennedy School Professor Nicholas Burns.

Report - International Whaling Commission

The Future of the International Whaling Commission: Strengthening Ocean Diplomacy

| May 16, 2008

"Whales symbolize divergent issues ranging from science-based management of natural resources to moral considerations associated with our relationship with the natural world....While much work has been done on the management of terrestrial ecosystems, there is growing concern over the state of the world's oceans and the limited number of comprehensive international regimes that can address critical issues such as the resources that lie beyond national jurisdiction. This problem is compounded by scientific uncertainties associated with the current state of knowledge of marine ecosystems.


But these uncertainties also represent opportunities to position the International Whaling Commission as a flagship organization in ocean diplomacy and science-based conservation and management...."

Journal Article - Science

Science and Technology for Sustainable Well-Being

| January 25, 2008

"I would urge every scientist and engineer with an interest in the intersection of S&T with sustainable well-being...to 'tithe' 10% of your professional time and effort to working in these and other ways to increase the benefits of S&T for the human condition and to decrease the liabilities. If so much as a substantial fraction of the world's scientists and engineers resolved to do this much, the acceleration of progress toward sustainable well-being for all of Earth's inhabitants would surprise us all."