This report outlines the first coherent strategy drawn up by the UN to address dryland management, taking into account environmental concerns and the well-being of dryland communities. It examines the relationship between drylands and climate change, food security and livelihoods, and highlights ways in which the UN is working to mainstream drylands into policymaking processes.

Climate change is already having an impact on crop yields and nutrition in areas that rely on rain-fed agriculture, according to the report, and these impacts will intensify by 2020 in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America. The impacts of climate change may be most pronounced in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, suggesting that those already vulnerable will be affected the most.

A key message is that the international community has an opportunity to address the underlying causes of dryland degradation. The report concludes that global cooperation must be intensified if the ten-year strategic plan of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification — whose aim is to tackle desertification and degradation — and the Millennium Development Goals are to be achieved.

This paper, published by the UK-based Institute of Development Studies, examines how disaster risks associated with climate change might impact electricity generation and energy planning — which is an emerging research and development agenda. The authors argue that energy researchers and policymakers have overlooked how changing disaster risks could affect electrical power production.

The report assesses the vulnerability of nuclear power as well as several other options for energy generation — including oil, natural gas, hydropower and bioenergy — and identifies the implications for energy policy and planning. It lists recommendations as to how policymakers could take into account the link between disaster risk management and low-carbon development to improve the capacity of developing countries to build resilience. Suggestions include completing environmental impact assessments when siting new power plants, establishing better links between energy, climate, and disaster policymakers, and planning climate change adaption strategies for electricity production.

This safety guide, published by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is designed to help countries prepare plans to improve their capacity to respond to nuclear or radiological emergencies whether as a result of an accident or malicious use of nuclear material. The guide can also be used to meet IAEA's safety requirements.

It outlines generic and operational criteria, according to specific radiation doses, to help policymakers decide between different courses of action to protect the public, emergency workers and the environment. It includes guidelines for assessing food and water contamination, and subsequent remediation measures, as well as on how to set safety perimeters around an incident depending on initial observations at the scene. The guide also outlines lessons learned from past experiences.

This special issue of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Science explores how vaccines can fulfil their full potential for addressing global health challenges. It charts the progress to date, reviewing successes as well as challenges in the development and distribution of both human and veterinary vaccines.

The articles describe how vaccines can help mitigate and treat the world's major infectious diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, as well as chronic diseases, such as cancer. They explore vaccine policy and financing, ways to accelerate the development of new vaccines, issues surrounding public acceptance, and the logistics of getting vaccines to where they are needed. Also discussed is the use of vaccines to treat diseases in livestock — making an important link between health interventions, agricultural output and economic consequences.

The papers in this issue were presented at the meeting, 'New vaccines for global health', held at the Royal Society in London, United Kingdom, in November 2010.

This paper aims to assess the suitability of using self-reported food security indicators to assess the welfare impact of the 2007–2008 global food crisis. It tests the usefulness of data from the Gallup World Poll (GWP) — a survey of self-reported food insecurity conducted before, during, and after the crisis — as an alternative to modelling estimates produced by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the US Department of Agriculture, and the World Bank.

The results suggest that although trends vary across countries, global self-reported food insecurity fell between 2005 and 2008, with the most reasonable estimate indicating 60–250 million fewer food-insecure people over that period. This trend contrasts with what was estimated by modelling-based methods. It is driven by rapid economic growth and limited food price inflation in China and India, among other heavily populated countries.

This perspective article highlights some of the most proactive and innovative ideas related to water management and policy, including the concepts of 'virtual water' — water used to produce food that is traded — and the 'water footprint'. The authors discuss a range of issues, including water pricing, sustainability, water quality and alternative resources.

This academic paper explores the Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) system within the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The authors highlight the principle challenges facing non-commercial biodiversity research scientists, in particular the tight regulations that restrict access to genetic resources in many countries and ultimately hinder the generation of knowledge vital to implementing the CBD.

This report describes practices that small-scale farmers can use to adapt to climate change. The authors divide these practices into five categories: farm management and technology, farm financial management, diversification, government interventions in infrastructure, health and risk reduction. They conclude that farmers in developing countries are already using creative practices to manage climate challenges and that climate policies must strive to incorporate these.

This discussion paper describes the links between global climate change and ecosystem and animal health that researchers generally agree on and the impacts that, while less certain, are still likely. The author highlights gaps in current knowledge, emphasising the need for better disease surveillance and more localised climatological and ecological data.

This feature article examines some of the key debates around the role of genetically modified (GM) technology in Africa.

The technology promises much to malnourished populations on a continent that climate change threatens to make even more inhospitable to crops. But anti-GM campaigners maintain that Africa's hunger crisis will not be solved by biotechnology.

US agri-biotech corporations such as Monsanto who lobby African governments to buy into such technology also have a large financial stake in rolling out GM over such a large continent. The anti-GM lobby, traditionally made up of environment charities such as Greenpeace, are now seeing aid charities such as Oxfam join its ranks.

The real stand-off, however, is between the largely pro-GM United States and a cautious Europe. The US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is pro-GM, has provided millions of dollars to support biosafety policymaking and research in the developing world.

European countries meanwhile do not rule out introducing GM technology to Africa but want GM products labelled and traceable to their source. The deciding factor may be how effective GM is in improving nutrition — and that remains under debate.

The one bright note in global warming is seemingly that higher carbon dioxide levels will make food crops grow faster. More crops should equal more food. But, as this feature article emphasises, the story is not that simple.

Initial tests have shown that plants grown in high carbon dioxide environments could be less nutritious — with lower protein levels and a different type of protein produced. Other scientists have found a drop in key micronutrients such as chromium, selenium and zinc in high carbon dioxide environments.

Mitigating these changes can involve increasing nitrogen levels to offset protein deficiency, although not all scientists agree on this.

What is clear is that there is very little research in this area and past studies have only looked at carbon dioxide concentrations of 550 parts per million, which is lower than levels predicted by the end of this century.

This feature article, written by members of the UN Operational Satellite Applications (UNOSAT) programme, outlines how satellite technology can improve emergency relief after a natural disaster.

UNOSAT uses satellite data to produce maps and damage reports for nongovernment organisations, intergovernmental agencies and disaster managers in emergency situations. The authors describe how the process works — from receiving a relief agency's phone call to collecting and analysing relevant satellite data.

They argue that satellite data, when combined with ancillary data such as road maps or population distribution, can help aid workers navigate affected areas and provide estimates of the number of people likely to be affected by, for example, floods or landslides.

The authors describe the range of satellite sensors used by UNOSAT, explaining the advantages of different types of data depending on the disaster. For example, radar imagery, which is unaffected by cloud, is particularly useful to monitor flooding, whereas high resolution optical data is better for earthquake damage assessment.

This opinion article, published by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), argues that the real challenges to effective preparation for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) are creating robust governance and funding structures, not just capacity building.

The authors outline the practicalities of developing REDD mechanisms. They note that REDD could potentially mitigate the risk of climate change, conserve biodiversity and support development in forest areas. They express concern, however, that some approaches to implementing REDD projects have had limited success and note that reducing degradation can be particularly challenging.

The report concludes with suggestions for ensuring that REDD frameworks move from preparation to successful deployment. These include careful consideration of development implications for measures taken to promote reduced forest dependence and improve links between public and private finance to encourage complementary use of funds.

This report, submitted by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, looks at how smallholder agriculture could help mitigate climate change. It focuses on soil carbon sequestration, which, say the authors, has high mitigation potential and is relevant to smallholders, although it is currently excluded from the Clean Development Mechanism.

One issue highlighted by the report is how to quantify mitigation through soil carbon sequestration. It proposes a combined measurement and modelling approach and the steps needed to implement this are discussed. These include creating a fund for pilot projects, agreeing field and lab protocols, establishing a common data archive and devising monitoring and evaluation methods.

The report also asks how carbon finance can be linked to the smallholder agricultural sector. It argues that enabling agricultural mitigation from developing countries will mean creating institutions that can aggregate carbon crediting among many stakeholders, facilitating the flow of carbon finance, building capacity and agreeing property rights to the carbon benefits generated.

This article, published by Mongabay.com, discusses the use of forest conservation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation in the Amazon. The author describes the 'reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation' (REDD) mechanism included in the Bali roadmap for international agreement on climate change. He gives a brief history of REDD, explains how it could work and discusses complicating factors including land rights, measurement of deforestation rates, displacement effects of conservation and funding.

The author also discusses how promoting ecosystem services could provide a route to conserving rainforests, citing the example of Canopy Capital — a UK private equity firm that recently bought the rights to environmental services generated by a rainforest reserve in Guyana. He also examines other market incentives that could be used, including satellite surveillance to enforce conservation and certification for farmers following conservation rules.

This collection of features and commentaries, published by Nature, reflects the broad spectrum of activities and opinions of members and associates of TWAS, the academy of sciences for the developing world.

With more than three dozen articles written by prominent scientists working on research or policy issues in the South, the collection examines a range of topics in science-based international development — from the relevance of subjects like mathematics or physics, to the increasing roles of biotechnology and renewable energy.

The achievements made and challenges still facing developing countries in key areas like agriculture, health, climate change and energy are also discussed. And evidence from across the South is presented to show how strengthening science can help achieve economic goals and what more is needed to ensure that knowledge and development are shared by all.

This paper discusses ways of reconciling the Millennium Development Goals with environmental sustainability. Using an example from Brazil — the Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA) — the authors examine why researchers aiming to produce sound scientific understanding to support sustainable development often fall short.

Translating knowledge created by the LBA project into public policies proved difficult. The authors blame this failure on resource limitations, weak institutions and scientists' inexperience in applying science to real situations.

They suggest that establishing centres of excellence in developing regions is a necessary first step to creating a bottom-up approach to sustainability that includes innovative ways of assessing ecosystem services. These centres must be able to effectively use and produce applications-directed research and bring it to bear on decision-making related to environmental change and sustainable management of natural resources, say the authors.

This paper discusses likely future changes in tropical cyclones, questioning whether they will become more intense following higher sea surface temperatures. The author outlines the different approaches currently taken to climate modelling and discusses the results of characterising current and future climate using the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg model, comparing them to observations.

Most climate models predict stronger tropical cyclones in a warmer climate, as an increase in latent heat provides more energy for the storms. But the author claims there is less evidence for a reduction in the frequency of storms in a warmer climate. Still, such a reduction could result from a general weakening of large-scale atmospheric circulation (which reduces the number of cyclones) caused by the rapid increase in water vapour that would follow a rise in global temperatures.

The way discussions about biotechnology are framed is also dealt with, concluding that innovative, new techniques are required to create a rational dialogue with the public.

Innovation systems perspectives on agricultural research and technological change are fast becoming a popular approach to the study of how society generates, disseminates, and utilises knowledge. It provides an opportunity to study and explore complex relationships between the many agents and institutions that make up an innovation system. Early applications of the innovation systems framework to developing-country agriculture suggest opportunities for more intensive and extensive analysis.

This paper analyses these applications and suggests several ways of strengthening the mode of inquiry and quality of analysis. This paper will be of interest to science and technology policy analysts and policymakers in developing countries seeking to apply innovative concepts to agriculture.