Articles

Recent national trends in investments in global energy research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) are inconsistent around the world. Public RD&D investments in energy are the metric most commonly used in international comparative assessments of energy-technology innovation, and the metric employed in this article. Overall, the data indicate that International Energy Agency (IEA) member country government investments have been volatile: they peaked in the late 1970s, declined during the subsequent two decades, bottomed out in 1997, and then began to gradually grow again during the 2000s.

"Without energy, there is no economy. Without climate, there is no environment. Without economy and environment, there is no material well-being, no civil society, no personal or national security. The overriding problem associated with these realities, of course, is that the world has long been getting most of the energy its economies need from fossil fuels whose emissions are imperiling the climate that its environment needs."

"Efforts to introduce novel agricultural crops or foods are welcomed and supported by some politically important groups in the developing world, ignored by others, and at times opposed by a significant few. When considering the political actors on the landscape most likely to take active positions either for or against novel foods, there is little or no evidence of political resistance to any of the biofortified foods developed thus far using conventional crop-breeding techniques, yet resistance to GMO crops has been widespread for much of the past decade. Which actors on the landscape are opposing GMOs, how powerful are they, and will their opposition weaken if the current generation of GMO crops carrying improved agronomic traits is followed by a second generation of GMOs carrying improved nutrient traits?"

"This introductory essay explains how this new technology is being driven by the actors (multinational corporations), markets (large global markets) and rules (intellectual property) of globalisation."

Sustaining the bioeconomy will require the adoption of a governance regime for biotechnology that helps bring a large number of developing countries into the global trading system. Failure to do so will create a "genetic divide" among countries and likely will intensify public opposition to biotechnology that will be fueled by presumptions about possible market dislocation and apparent technological disparities among nations. 3 A global governance system will require improvements in market access, development of technological capabilities, access to technology, a favorable regulatory environment for biotechnology, and management of risks and benefits associated with its use.

This paper shows an integrated assessment for energy planning and climate change mitigation in Mexico, as an international case study.