As commercial synthetic biology production gathers speed, there are growing calls for greater regulation, reports Yojana Sharma.

Efforts to protect precious marine biodiversity by combining science and local knowledge are difficult but can work, reports Naomi Antony.

Yojana Sharma analyses the work of a four-day meeting on access to data and information that will feed into next year’s Rio+20 conference on sustainable development.

When it comes to biodiversity information, incentives need to be provided to improve international sharing of data, report Tracy Irvine and Daniela Hirschfield.

SciDev.Net speaks to UN Environment Programme executive director Achim Steiner at the Eye on Earth Summit (12-15 December) about next year's Rio+20.

New technologies offer the promise of delivering environmental information to anyone who wants it, anywhere in the world. But we are not quite there yet.

A preparatory meeting for the Rio+20 summit will discuss open access environmental data with a focus on biodiversity, water, oceans, cities and disasters. Yojana Sharma reports.

Laura Hood summarises the latest data on the world's biodiversity, with facts and figures on its value and efforts to conserve it.

A better understanding of the wide genetic diversity of indigenous African livestock is needed to secure current and future productivity.

China's profitable rubber industry is a boon for some rural communities, but the environmental costs could be much higher.

Climate change threatens food crops across the world. Now scientists are re-focusing their efforts on crop resilience, rather than yields.

The Quinghai-Tibet railway has now been open for over a year. Jane Qiu evaluates its success and examines the challenges it still faces.

The palm oil industry needs to prove its sustainability and is turning to scientists for ways to minimise harm, reports Richard Stone.

T. V. Padma reports on Bhutan's dilemma: how to reconcile conservation, economic development and happiness in a modern world.

Dominic Glover outlines the status of agricultural biotechnology research, development and commercialisation in sub-Saharan Africa.

The popularity of palm oil as a biofuel is a disaster for Indonesia's forests, providing cover for illegal loggers and destroying biodiversity in the region, reports Ian MacKinnon.

Scientists have embarked on an ambitious plan to restore the ecosystems of Brazil's Atlantic rainforest devastated by deforestation, reports Bernice Wuethrich.

Conservation is seeing a surge in 'quick and dirty' biodiversity surveys with an emphasis on local participation. Thomas Hayden reports from the Amazon.

Maasai mapmakers are helping solve one of modern Africa's biggest conflicts — between humans and wild predators. Kimani Chege reports.

Miguel B. Araújo and Carsten Rahbek discuss the challenge of perfecting models that predict how species will shift with climate change.