SciDev.Net

Africa Harvest — founded by Kenyan scientist Florence Wambugu — supports policy development and scientific and institutional capacity building across East Africa and promotes the use of modern biotechnologies to help the region's farmers. The foundation's flagship project uses tissue culture technology to reproduce disease-free banana plants for distribution across East Africa.

It also runs a communication and advocacy programme to promote public acceptance of biotechnologies — especially genetic modification. The organisation publishes information about its tree-planting programme in Kenya and links to other African and international organisations working in biotechnology.

AMMANET promotes using genetic marker-assisted selection (MAS) technologies to accelerate African plant breeding efforts and deliver food security and economic growth. Over 100 African scientists established the network in 2003, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation.

The network brings regional and international agricultural researchers together, publishing information about its activities and providing contact information of all its members. It also links to news, scientific articles and other useful resources on MAS.

The Amazonas Sustainable Foundation (FAS) plays an important role in reducing deforestation in the Amazon Region. FAS manages the Juma reserve, established by the Government of Amazonas in 2006, and runs the Bolsa Floresta programme that pays families and communities to contribute to sustainable forest management. The FAS website provides an introduction to the organisation, an overview of their programmes and links to relevant related documents.

ASB is a global partnership for research on tropical forest margins that operates as part of the Consultative Group for International Research in Agriculture (CGIAR). By including a broad range of stakeholders, ASB identifies and develops policies and practices that can achieve their vision of prosperous people and flourishing forests across the tropics. It publishes information on its work, policy briefs and working group reports.

The BioSafe Train project is an international collaboration of scientists aiming to build capacity for dealing with the challenges associated with implementing genetically modified (GM) crops in East Africa.

It publishes information on students' research projects that cover topics such as the environmental impacts of GM maize in Kenya, biodiversity in cotton fields in Uganda and the ecological risks posed by transgenic rice in Tanzania.

With its headquarters in Indonesia, CIFOR conducts collaborative research with partners in over 40 countries to inform policies and practices that affect forests in developing countries. The website provides a thorough introduction to CIFOR research including an overview of regions covered by the centre and access to publications including journal articles, working papers and info briefs. Activities are arranged into three programmes covering environmental services and sustainable use of forests, forest governance, and forests and livelihoods.

The Dartmouth Flood Observatory, based in the United States, uses remote sensing data to detect, measure and map river discharge and flooding. It publishes rapid response inundation maps during a flood as well as an atlas of large floods from 1985 to present.

Data from the observatory are used by several disaster alert and relief agencies, including Sentinel Asia, Thomson Reuters AlertNet, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and Europe's Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System.

The Desert Research Institute is based in Nevada in the United States. Its principal research areas include atmosphere, water and land management – in the United States and in the developing world. The institute is engaged in a project to bring clean water and sanitation to communities in Ghana, Mali and Niger through the West Africa Water Initiative (WAWI). WAWI aims to do this before 2008.

Funded by the European Union, DESIRE is an international collaborative project aimed at establishing alternative strategies for using and protecting arid and semi-arid ecosystems under threat from land degradation and desertification. Field sites for testing new conservation techniques include areas in Africa, China and Latin America.

The DESIRE website publishes news and information about the project, highlights upcoming events and links to other relevant sites.

EM-DAT, run by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, provides statistics and data on disasters' impact on humans, such as the number of people killed, injured or affected as well as economic damage estimates and disaster-specific aid contributions.

Users can search the database or pull out summary information including graphs to show temporal trends as well as reference maps of disasters by type or date.

The Global Canopy Programme (GCP) is an alliance of over 30 scientific institutions in 19 countries that work on forest canopy research, education and conservation. In addition to supporting research projects, GCP is active in informing policymakers and working with governments and the finance sector to establish pilot projects for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). GCP publishes information for journalists, policy briefs and a range of related publications.

IBSA, a joint project of the departments of science and technology in Brazil, India and South Africa, promotes research collaborations between scientists working on applications of nanotechnology. Its priority fields of research include health, water treatment and agriculture. India leads its flagship project on water purification.

IBSA publishes information on participating scientists from all three countries, ongoing projects, key global events and activities, and fellowships and job openings.