Scientists can help advance policies to promote agricultural practices that can reduce emissions and boost yields.

City planners can find a way to use existing evidence and deal with uncertainty in designing strategies for climate change adaptation.

Rio+20 is an opportunity to focus on harnessing scientific evidence and good governance to improve the management of water resources.

Scientists can help smallholder farmers get more out of their crops in changing food markets.

Planting trees in dryland regions can negatively impact biodiversity, and policies must promote the practice on a smaller scale.

Sending students abroad and inviting in foreign institutions are both effective methods for boosting developing world higher education.

South–South research collaboration can be a powerful strategy for boosting scientific capacity and achieving common goals. But it should not be embraced uncritically, says Athar Osama.

An assessment of national tuberculosis policies in select countries emphasises the need for more public engagement.

The challenge of setting policy priorities for infectious diseases in Myanmar's current political climate.

Recommendations on how policymakers can decrease the joint burden of tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.

Growing dryland populations are depleting their natural resources, while increasingly-settled agriculture ignores the traditional knowledge needed to tackle future uncertainties, says David Thomas.

Valuing the benefits ecosystems give us is a vital step in ensuring their sustainable use and conservation. Anantha Duraiappah shows how environmental economics offers the best way yet to tackle the job.

Ten years since the UNCCD came into force, the problems remain. Despite some successes, varying definitions and restricted finance limit the convention's effectiveness, as Lindsay Stringer explains.

Biodiversity in the world's drylands is fragile, easily disrupted and under threat. John Lemons sets out guidelines for tailoring policies to best protect these uniquely adapted species.

With water scarcity already affecting over a billion people, dryland populations should combine traditional and modern knowledge to manage water access sustainably, says Theib Oweis.

An overview of the various ways in which techniques that do not involve genetic modification can helping plant breeders to develop and propagate new crop varieties.

Despite the urgent need for a malaria vaccine, progress in developing one has been slow and scientists do not always agree on the best way forward. This policy brief outlines the current status of malaria vaccine research.

An outline of the opportunities and challenges in large-scale use of artemisinin combination therapies to treat malaria.

Insecticide-treated bednets to prevent malaria

Sudden epidemics of malaria need to be tackled quickly to stop them spiralling out of control; an early warning system could help predict outbreaks to mobilise a fast response.