COP27: Navigating a difficult road to Sharm El-Sheikh Expert comment NCapeling 6 July 2022

Against a backdrop of rising urgency, COP27 in Egypt will bring all aspects of climate action into the spotlight – but especially the role of the host country.

As COP26 drew to a close in Glasgow, Egyptian officials announced their priorities for COP27, emphasizing climate finance and climate adaptation – a new approach given previous COPs mainly focused on mitigation, reducing emissions to limit climate damage.

This was followed by the COP27 presidency outlining its vision at MENA Climate Week 2022 to achieve ‘substantive and equal progress’ on all aspects of the negotiations, and Egypt emphasizing its intention to focus on implementing existing carbon reduction targets rather than pushing for further carbon cuts.

Egypt argues it is hosting COP27 on behalf of African nations and that, while it is promoting the interests of the developing world, it will be an impartial arbiter. However it is also useful to consider its priorities from the Egyptian government’s perspective.

Agenda drivers

Egypt has long prioritized climate finance and adaptation because it remains in need of technical and financial support to adapt, especially in agriculture and tourism.

It plans to expand its access to climate funding and investment, an area in which Egypt has been relatively successful as it currently receives 27 per cent of all multilateral climate finance in the MENA region and has issued the region’s first sovereign green bonds.

With public debt currently 94 per cent of GDP, Egyptian officials have also called for debt relief for Egypt and other developing countries.

Egypt’s Climate Change Strategy reflects this approach, aiming to enhance Egypt’s rank on the Climate Change Performance Index in order to ‘attract more investments and acquire more climate funding’.

Limiting the mitigation scope and the focus on finance also echoes Egypt’s own reluctance to make carbon reduction commitments. The Egyptian nationally determined contribution (NDC) – its 2030 pledge under the Paris Agreement – does not include any quantifiable emission reduction targets.

Egypt is one of only a few countries which failed to submit an updated NDC in 2021 and its upcoming update will not include an economy-wide carbon reduction target.

Egypt has also never published a long-term strategy and has no decarbonization plans despite independent estimates it should cut rising emissions by one-quarter by 2030, and by two-thirds by 2050 to be aligned with the Paris Agreement. This partly explains why observers rate Egypt’s climate action as highly insufficient.

Furthermore, Egypt’s championing of ‘moving from pledges to implementation’ without having quantifiable carbon reduction pledges of its own effectively exempts it from both pledging and implementation.

As a developing country, Egypt’s negotiating position is supported by UNFCCC provisions which recognize differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities of nations.

Its proposal to focus COP27 on the implementation of climate action and finance pledges is important in consolidating progress. But not pushing for more emission reductions at this critical moment risks derailing global decarbonization momentum and undermining global climate action.

According to optimistic estimates, if current climate pledges were implemented the world would still remain on track for 2°C of warming by the end of the century, with far worse impacts than if warming was curbed at 1.5°C.

Under a 2°C scenario, 37 per cent of the global population could regularly be exposed to extreme heat waves compared to 14 per cent in a 1.5°C warmer world, with developing countries expected to be worst-affected.

A 2°C trajectory also runs the risk of tipping points such as the melting of ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland, triggering runaway climate change. Time to change the warming trajectory is running out as the latest IPCC assessment warns the window of opportunity is now ‘brief and rapidly closing’, and the UN Secretary General recently called for faster carbon cuts by the end of 2022 to avoid a ‘climate catastrophe’.

A different energy transition

Egypt opted not to join any of the voluntary sectoral coalitions at COP26 on reducing methane, clean energy transition, transition to zero-emissions vehicles, or moving beyond oil and gas.

This position is explained by its growing role as an exporter and advocate for fossil gas in the energy transition. Egypt is the second-largest producer of natural gas in Africa and is emerging as a fossil gas hub for the eastern Mediterranean, which is shaping its domestic energy policy.

Its 59GW electricity generation capacity is almost double the peak demand and is dominated by gas-powered electricity generation, which currently represents 42 per cent of all Africa’s gas generation.

Egypt’s climate policy is also shaped by fossil gas, and its national Climate Change Strategy encourages the expansion of gas use by promoting a transition to compressed natural gas for vehicles, the expansion of its domestic natural gas network – despite having universal access to electricity – and shifting to a gas-fuelled shipping sector.

Egypt also voiced support for other African countries to extract and deploy fossil gas and oil resources, making it one of the protagonists of the ‘great fossil gas pushback’. These advocates defend the right of developing countries to deploy fossil gas as a ‘transition fuel’ and champion its necessity to solve energy poverty.

But their position is not shared by all African and developing countries, and is rejected by some civil society groups, who argue it risks locking in greenhouse gases and local emissions for decades as well as delaying future development of low carbon energy systems.

Egypt’s huge spare generation capacity has contributed to a slowdown in renewable energy projects over the past two years. With renewables representing just 6GW, Egypt is expected to miss its renewable energy target for 2022, set at 20 per cent of generating capacity.

Engaging Egypt better

But these positions are more malleable than they seem, and Egypt is open to dialogue – not just on refining the COP27 agenda but also on reviewing its own climate priorities and leveraging its energy sector for a more ambitious transition.

Culture notes: Europe's broken promises to Africa The World Today mhiggins.drupal 1 August 2022

Europe’s ‘gas grab’ in Africa is just the latest abuse of its relationship with the continent, says Catherine Fieschi.

When Emmanuel Macron made one of his first visits to Africa as France’s recently elected young president in 2017, his speech at Ouagadougou University in Burkina Faso was designed to set the tone for a new relationship between his country and African countries. 

‘There no longer is a French policy for Africa,’ he said.

This was a signal away from ‘la Françafrique’, with its post-colonial accents and the propping up of regimes friendly to France, to something that was more strategic, equitable and transparent – more partnership and less tutelage. 

And Europe seemed to be following suit. In March 2020 the European Union and Africa decided that they would redefine their relationship. The European Commission unveiled its vision for a ‘comprehensive strategy with Africa’. The roadmap would give Africa significantly more say over the nature and extent of the relationship, more choice and more political agency.

But what, today, is left of these aspirations? Despite repeated statements, Europe seems to be saying one thing and doing another. 

Earlier this year, after the long-awaited 6th annual EU-African Union summit in Brussels, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa was frank when he summed up the gap between stated ambitions and the current relationship. The pandemic-weary Global South had reason to be wary. Ramaphosa laid out missed opportunities, disappointment and the low expectations that act as self-fulfilling prophecies. 

Europe’s changing focus in Africa 

From the apparent high point of the Ouagadougou speech, Macron has now turned to the Organization Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) in Africa for geopolitical purposes. His primary aim is to combat the rise of Islamist militants and terrorism in the Sahel as well as to tackle the growing influence of China and Russia in the region. 

Russian inroads – via the security firm Wagner in Mali, for instance – have given France further cause to use the OIF to counter destabilization activities. Both the United Kingdom and France train African military in the Sahel, but now, with the end of France’s anti-insurgent Operation Barkhane in Mali, the subsequent withdrawal of French troops and the increasingly established presence of the Wagner group, the security situation in the region is expected to deteriorate dramatically and become increasingly impermeable to European interests and forces.

As for development aid, Britain’s Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy makes no bones about the fact that Asia is now a priority over Africa.

The relationship between Africa and Britain is being transformed as a result, most obviously through the cuts in development aid, with African aid cut by 66 per cent in 2021. But the nature of the relationship, which has become both more conditional and more transactional, has also changed. 

The UK is emphasizing human rights and ‘free societies’, but also pushing for free market principles rather than the kind of state involvement that some African countries often prefer as a road to accelerated and more autonomous development. 

The future of energy exports and COP27

The issue of energy exports points to what will most likely trigger the greatest disappointment in the next few years – climate and climate finance. 

Green energy deals, like the $8.5 billion COP26 package from the EU, United States and UK to South Africa, look far more problematic now in the light of Europe’s African gas-grab. Indeed, Europe is importing as much African gas as it can after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia reduced supplies. Yet African countries are still being told to curb their own use of ‘dirty’ energy. 

As an illustration, Nigeria holds 3 per cent of the world’s gas reserves, but has barely tapped them, while 40 per cent of its output is exported to Europe. In April, Italy closed deals to buy gas from Angola and the Republic of Congo, while Germany did the same with Senegal.
 

At COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, developed countries pledged an annual $100 billion in climate finance to developing countries for both adaptation and mitigation. But pledges have never really materialized. The aid agency Oxfam estimates that only about a third of the money has been delivered. Climate finance was again the main focus of COP26 – and dismissed by Greta Thunberg as more ‘blah, blah, blah’.

This series of repeated resets, pledges and disappointments tells a story – indeed, several stories. First and foremost, it is one of arrogance and betrayal. That much is obvious. But it is also a story about stories – about how the narratives elaborated by various European countries and leaders never amount to more than a sum of transactions. 

Climate change places Europe, and other rich nations, at a crossroads in its relationship with Africa: the former holds the wealth, but also some of the keys and threats to the transition. COP27, to be held in Egypt in November, will be the next chapter in the story. 

Bile acids (BAs) have been established as ubiquitous regulatory molecules implicated in a large variety of healthy and pathological processes. However, the scope of BA heterogeneity is often underrepresented in current literature. This is due in part to inadequate detection methods, which fail to distinguish the individual constituents of the BA pool. Thus, the primary aim of this study was to develop a method that would allow the simultaneous analysis of specific C24 BA species, and to apply that method to biological systems of interest. Herein, we describe the generation and validation of an LC-MS/MS assay for quantification of numerous BAs in a variety of cell systems and relevant biofluids and tissue. These studies included the first baseline level assessment for planar BAs, including allocholic acid, in cell lines, biofluids, and tissue in a nonhuman primate (NHP) laboratory animal, Macaca mulatta, in healthy conditions. These results indicate that immortalized cell lines make poor models for the study of BA synthesis and metabolism, whereas human primary hepatocytes represent a promising alternative model system. We also characterized the BA pool of M. mulatta in detail. Our results support the use of NHP models for the study of BA metabolism and pathology in lieu of murine models. Moreover, the method developed here can be applied to the study of common and planar C24 BA species in other systems.

Nuclear Disarmament and the Protection of Cultural Heritage Research paper sysadmin 6 October 2017

States possessing nuclear weapons should be called upon to consider and publish the risks posed to cultural heritage, and their mitigation strategies, in their nuclear-weapons doctrines and policies.

Summary

• Renewed risk assessments for nuclear weapons and policies are taking place around the world in light of nuclear modernization and the changing geostrategic environment that is making the use of nuclear weapons more likely. As such the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons and tests have received increased attention. However, the effect on cultural heritage has so far been neglected.
• The potential for armed conflict to destroy cultural heritage has been recognized in international law since 1954. There is significant evidence on the impact of nuclear weapons on cultural heritage including the consequences of their use in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the effect of nuclear-testing programmes in places of cultural significance since 1945. States that possess nuclear weapons have increased liabilities and responsibilities to protect cultural heritage and cultural rights. The need to protect cultural heritage should strengthen the case for reducing and eliminating nuclear weapons.
• Failure to take into account the protection of heritage in the development of nuclear weapons policies – including disarmament, non-proliferation and arms-control negotiations – significantly undermines states’ existing commitments to protecting heritage threatened by conflict.
• Risk assessments of the impact of nuclear weapons on cultural heritage and important cultural artefacts – and methods of preventing such catastrophic damage – should be part of protecting cultural heritage in every country and the subject of informed public debate. A new body of knowledge on the full range of nuclear weapons impacts would introduce a fresh perspective to inform decision-makers, international organizations and the public in thinking about nuclear weapons policies and practices.
• Risk and resilience frameworks, which provide sets of solutions for risk assessments, would allow assessments of nuclear weapons threats to heritage and highlight vulnerabilities that need to be addressed. Such frameworks would provide a basis for policymakers to identify the world’s cultural heritage most at risk and help develop mitigation strategies to ensure that it is protected. In particular, states possessing nuclear weapons should be called upon to consider and publish the risks posed to cultural heritage, and their mitigation strategies, in their nuclear weapons doctrines and policies, as a contribution to transparency and confidence-building, and as a responsibility to the world’s shared heritage. International organizations, such as the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), have a role to play in bridging security perspectives with protecting cultural heritage.

Subsidies and Sustainable Agriculture: Mapping the Policy Landscape Research paper sysadmin 10 December 2019

Agricultural subsidies shape production and consumption patterns, with potentially significant effects on poverty, nutrition and other sustainability concerns. This paper maps the different types of support provided by governments to the agricultural sector, and highlights some of the complex political economy dynamics that underpin the relevant policies.

Summary

• Agricultural subsidies, a mainstay of government policy, have a large part in shaping production and consumption patterns, with potentially significant effects as regards poverty, food security, nutrition, and other sustainability concerns such as climate change, land use practices and biodiversity.
• There are multiple types of direct and indirect support provided by governments to various actors in the agricultural sector; and in terms of political economy, there are complex dynamics underpinning the policies that sustain these subsidies.
• Overall, subsidies targeting producers have the most significant effect on production, and the greater trade-distorting effect. These subsidies promote domestic production and discourage imports, leading to overproduction that is largely disposed of on the international market, with the help of export subsidies. This can tend to intensify negative environmental agricultural practices, such as cultivating marginal land, unsustainable types of intensification, or incentivizing excessive pesticide and fertilizer use.
• On the other hand, producer subsidies that are not tied to output of a specific commodity (i.e. delinked) have far fewer distorting impacts and could help to deliver sustainable outcomes. For example, this type of subsidies can require crop diversification or be linked to conservation of permanent grassland.
• Subsidies that enable transfers to consumers, for example through food stamp programmes, also serve to delink production from consumption, can foster healthier diets, can play an important role in delivering food accessibility and security among low-income groups, and can represent one of the less trade-distorting subsidies.
• If subsidies are to be reformed to help promote healthier diets and encourage more sustainable production, it is essential to understand not only the type and amount of support that key countries provide, but also the domestic dynamics that can shape such policies.
• While price support, input subsidies or investment aids remain the central pillars of programmes in large developing countries such as Brazil, China or India, other economies – notably including the EU and Japan – focus on direct payments, support for general services and set-aside schemes, as well as significant border protection. The US, for its part, has tended to focus on subsidized insurance schemes and food programmes for poorer consumers.
• If subsidies are to deliver policy objectives, their design and implementation should delink production from consumption. For example, consumer subsidies designed to deliver nutrition and food security, or payments for environmental services to enable more environmentally friendly production systems, could prove to be the most effective, least trade-distorting means of achieving more sustainable and equitable agricultural production.
• The political economy of food means that the removal of subsidies is often highly sensitive, and tends to be met with significant resistance. However, reform that delinks support from production through a gradual transition process could ultimately prove successful in delivering effective subsidy schemes.
• Effective subsidy schemes must by design be truly result- and performance-based, supported by robust and objective indicators. At the same time, engaging multiple actors along key commodity value chains – including leading importing and exporting countries, traders and transporters – could lead to the development of international, commodity-specific arrangements that are able to deliver effective nutrition and sustainability goals.

Culture notes: Populists of the world unite The World Today rsoppelsa.drupal 25 May 2022

America’s hard-right has successfully played a long game at home, and now it’s schmoozing Europe. We should be worried, says Catherine Fieschi

The politics of advanced democracies is a rather Janus-faced affair these days. No sooner have we breathed a sigh of relief at the results of the French presidential election than a leaked United States Supreme Court document on Roe v Wade signals American abortion rights are under threat. 

Yes, Europe seems to be maintaining political unity in its support of Ukraine, and the US is lavishing eye-watering sums on it both in military and humanitarian aid. Yet one cannot help but feel that these might be short-lived spells of relief in the face of mounting storm clouds on the political horizon. Both at the domestic and international level, populist politics looks to be gathering pace still. 

On the domestic front, we should be cautious in our relief. In the French elections Emmanuel Macron was indeed re-elected, and comfortably so, but there is no denying the space occupied by populist politicians on the left and the right. In the first round, Marine Le Pen gained 23 per cent of the vote, left populist candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon 22 per cent, and far-right candidate Éric Zemmour 7 per cent. Add to this a record low turnout, and the picture is one of a system in which mainstream politics has overall been rejected in favour of various populist options. 

The Hungarians weren’t so lucky, and Viktor Orbán’s capture of the media and quashing of the opposition over his years in power delivered solid victory. 

What should be cause for further concern is what is happening in the United States, as well as its potential impact on European politics. A quick flick through American politics today suggests dysfunctionalities of staggering magnitude and depth, and the full extent of the success of the right-wing Republican project, as confirmed by the intention to reverse Roe v Wade. 

Any reversal of Roe v Wade is a further step towards a drastic re-territorialization of American politics: into red states and blue states, into urban v rural, into places where taxes fund public education and public goods and where they won’t. It is also about a re-territorialization of institutional power away from the federal and into state institutions. 

The words of JD Vance, the Ohio Republican senatorial candidate – author of the rather good memoir Hillbilly Elegy – pander to an ‘American heartlands’ view of the United States’ role in the world. Asked about the fate of Ukraine, Vance simply replied that he ‘didn’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another’. 

On an even more basic level, we would do well to keep in mind that there were 440 anti-voter bills in 49 states at the end of 2021 and rising, calling into question citizens’ basic rights to vote. Republicans have pursued this agenda relentlessly. They have played a long game and invested in media, education and minor and not so minor projects – all of which have secured them a social and political base that is well-disposed towards the deep reversal of the American liberal global project and that of its allies across the world.

And it is perhaps on this last point that we should be most alarmed. Between May 18-20, the Conservative Political Action Conference, an American conclave of the right, was held in Europe. Viktor Orbán gave the keynote speech, and other speakers included the Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo, and the president of Spain’s far-right party Vox, Santiago Abascal, as well as some well-known American Trumpian voices, including Trump himself. Marine Le Pen, whose earlier appearance at the conference had met with rapturous applause, chose not to cosy-up too closely to Orbán in the run-up to the French parliamentary elections in June but she sent her deputy. 

The export of the Fox News-driven conference from across the Atlantic is deeply worrying. Up until now populists have failed in their attempts at international alliances. At the European Union level their nationalism has always been in the way of their working together, and their groups tend to be short-lived or ineffective as a result. As for American attempts in Europe, the one led by Steve Bannon, the former White House adviser, in 2020 that aimed to create an Academy for the Judeo-Christian West ended as a damp squib – possibly not helped by his dismissal from the White House amid charges of defrauding donors.

But something may be changing: the conference’s embrace of Orbán and an international smattering of ‘strongmen’ hailing from the hard-right, aligned with Putin and sup-ported by Trump and a media empire, suggests that we are entering a Trumpian-infused second act that in its triumphal revanchism is seeking to create an international right-wing populist, or even authoritarian front. This is about politics, media, but also money – something European populist parties have been short of. As Marine Le Pen explained to French voters, her party is so poor it had to borrow money from a Russian bank.  

As some have pointed out, the Russian aggression against Ukraine has complicated matters when it comes to Russian funding of disinformation to the West. Many routes have been shut down. But a new route between the US and Hungary as a platform to floss Europe with dirty money is a good replacement to the old Russian route. 
 

Culture notes: Will the EU find its voice at last? The World Today mhiggins.drupal 30 January 2023

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has galvanized the bloc, but doubt remains about how it can capitalize on this moment, writes Catherine Fieschi.

Despite its reticence to believe that Russia would attack Ukraine, once Vladimir Putin’s tanks rolled across the Donbas, the European Union finally grasped the momentous nature of the events unfolding on its eastern flank. The immediate reaction of Europe’s member states was one of unity, resolve and uncharacteristically rapid decision-making, at least on sanctions and energy policy.

That they would need to act in concert across a concatenation of crises that would be either triggered (energy), worsened (inflation) or heightened (geopolitical instability) by Putin’s move was obvious. And so, Europe’s collective narrative of this past year slid into place, and it goes something like this: We gave Russia the benefit of every doubt, including after their invasion of Crimea when we still tried to bring them back to the negotiating table, but Putin has made the fundamental choice of turning away from democracy and the rule of law.

Now, the narrative goes on, we have to treat them as enemies and give ourselves the means to become resilient in the face of aggression as Ukraine is all that stands – both symbolically and geographically – between us and the chaos of a Europe-wide war.

Like any good narrative, it is anchored in previous trials and exploits. Having learnt from its failure to coordinate action during the eurozone crisis and then the migration crisis, Europe was keen to make the most of its resilience in the face of the Covid pandemic in the form of the joint vaccine purchases and a massive recovery plan.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is an added – albeit dramatic and costly – opportunity to pursue further collective action and discover the next chapter of its shared purpose, as a political and perhaps even a defence alliance.

Europe had long been in need of an arc to follow. In the aftermath of the Second World War, peace and prosperity seemed enough. But the new multipolar world that emerged from the ashes of the Cold War and then 9/11 were more difficult to navigate for a largely commercial and regulatory alliance.

Could the EU, then, ever find its political voice?

David vs Goliath

While Brexit and Covid created rallying points, the shock and tragedy of the invasion delivered everything the EU needed in narrative terms: a David and Goliath story, with the opportunity to feature on Team David in European terms while allying with the United States, and a ‘band of brothers’ element to shore up a union bruised by the defection of a key but troubled member. Above all, the appearance of an arch-villain in the form of Vladimir Putin put Europe back into the familiar and mythical territory of the 1940s and then the Cold War.

When on May 28, 2016, Putin seated himself on the throne of the Byzantine emperors in Mount Athos’ Protaton Church in Greece in a scene truly worthy of Game of Thrones, the writing should have been on the wall. That day he explicitly laid out his aim to appoint himself as the new Eastern emperor who would fight the decadence of the West.

‘Today,’ Putin told the world, ‘we restore the values of patriotism, historical memory and traditional culture.’ Later, he cited Ukraine as the biggest unfinished mission of his years in power. That Europe – and Germany in particular – had taken so long to decipher Putin’s dark designs only adds to the narrative’s epic quality, positioning Europe as a victim of its own good faith and open heart.

Cracks in the narrative

But the narrative is not free from cracks. The Baltic states would argue that they had long warned of Putin’s nefarious intentions; and Poland has always been convinced of the threat posed by its neighbour.

Over his decades of farming and ranching, Gabe Brown has noticed a troubling trend: the conventional farming techniques he used were degrading the soil and harming nature. He shares how his family farm turned things around by adopting regenerative agricultural practices — and shows how the wider food system can use these same methods to improve food quality and revitalize the land.

Bilingual individuals demonstrate different personality characteristics when speaking different languages. Marketers making media and language decisions when addressing multilingual markets should add this finding to their list of influencing factors.

The post Cultural Frame Switching: Different Language, Different Personality appeared first on Neuromarketing.

The Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track Assistant Professor in human decision science, broadly construed.

In this fourth installment on the growth in dual-language learning, the director of dual-language education in Portland, Ore., says schools must have a clear reason for why they are offering dual-language instruction.

A state department leader outlines the challenges and benefits of partnering with researchers in school turnaround efforts in Tennessee.

Guo-qiang Bi
Dec 15, 1998; 18:10464-10472
Articles

Policy makers should support a broad array of approaches to overhauling global food systems, [...]

Rome, 2 December 2014 – The Ministers of Agriculture of the European Union and of other Mediterranean countries welcomed FAO’s transformational changes implemented in the last two years, and underlined [...]

Berlin- FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva has highlighted some of the most important events on the organization’s 2015 calendar during meetings with agriculture ministers who attended the Global Forum [...]

With rapid soil degradation, fast depletion of groundwater, excessive use of pesticides-fertilizers and extreme weather events all collectively putting stress on farming and forestry, it is time to recognise the [...]

MANUEL PLANELLES, EL PAÍS, Paris- “Agriculture is seen as a threat in the fight against climate change,” Maria Helena Semedo warns. The Deputy Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization [...]

February’s international symposium, entitled “The role of agricultural biotechnologies in sustainable food systems and nutrition”, will explore how the application of science and technology, and particularly agricultural biotechnologies, can benefit [...]

Cancun, Mexico. On [...]

Since the 1990s, rural transformations have helped millions of people exit poverty while remaining in rural areas. This underscores an important fact: revitalising rural economies helps create jobs for rural [...]

The report will be released during a presentation on Monday, 17 September, at 11:30 CEST, in FAO-HQ, Sheikh Zayed Center.

This new edition of the report focuses on the complex [...]

The report will be released during Press Conference on Monday, 15 October, at 1:00 PMRome time, in FAO-HQ, Sheikh Zayed Center. The Press Conference will be webcast [...]

On 26 November 2020, 15:00 - 16:30 (CET), FAO will launch the 2020 edition of the State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA).

This year's edition of this flagship publication presents [...]

Rome - The experience of farmers who manage agricultural heritage can help achieve the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration's main goals: support and scale-up efforts [...]

Understanding and managing disaster risks in global agriculture: Better data for ambitious action