The research, to be published Jan. 12 in the journal Science, focused on the long-term outcomes of a law that reserved leadership positions for women in randomly selected village councils in India.

The law has led to a direct role model effect and is changing the way the girls as well as their parents think about female roles of leadership and has improved their attitudes toward higher career aspirations and education goals for women, said Lori Beaman, an assistant professor of economics at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern.

Results of the study show that affirmative action laws can help create positive role models by opening opportunities that were previously unavailable to a group.

“India is definitely a place where women are constrained in their opportunities,” said Beaman, who is also a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern and one of the authors of the study. “This law gave Indian women, at the village level, a chance to demonstrate that they are capable leaders.”

Beaman’s research team collected data in West Bengal between 2006 and 2007 on 8,453 male and female teenagers and their parents in 495 villages. The law was implemented in that region starting in 1998 and from that time a village council spot could have been reserved for a female leader once, twice or never.

Here’s a glimpse at how the gender gap narrowed in villages with two terms of female leadership versus the villages that never had a female leader:

• Gender gap in aspirations for their children’s career and education closed by 25 percent in parents
• Gender gap in career and education aspirations closed by 32 percent in adolescents

The decline in the gender gap is entirely driven by an increase in girls’ aspirations, not by a decrease in boys,’ Beaman said.

In a change of behavior, adolescent Indian girls were more likely to be attending school and spent less time on household chores in the villages that reserved political positions for women.

“There weren’t any concurrent changes in education infrastructure or career options for young women during this time,” Beaman said. “The changes in behavior among adolescents can be contributed to the role model effect of the women leaders.”

The randomized process in which the government implemented the policy allowed the researchers to cleanly compare survey results of parents and teens in villages with a female leader for one term and two terms versus parents and teens in villages that had never had a female leader.

The positive effect of the exposure to capable female leaders seemed to mitigate against the perception that the female leaders’ achievements were not due to merit, Beaman said.

The results of this study support the idea that quotas and affirmative action in response to the underrepresentation of women in politics and perhaps in other areas, such as science and the corporate boardroom, is a positive action that creates influential role models and pays off in the long run, Beaman said.

Contact: Erin White
ewhite@northwestern.edu
847-491-4888
Northwestern University

Stark increases in natural disasters, food and water security problems and biodiversity loss are just part of the evidence that humanity may be crossing planetary boundaries and approaching dangerous tipping points. An effective environmental governance system needs to be instituted soon, according to independent experts commissioned by organizers of the huge “Planet Under Pressure” conference in London March 26-29, 2012.

As policy-makers gather in Durban, South Africa, for the 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Planet Under Pressure consortium today released the first five of nine policy briefs on key issues. The briefs deal with biodiversity and ecosystem services, food and water security, interconnected risks and solutions, and a topic common to all: reforming environmental governance from the local to the global level.

Prof. Frank Biermann of VU University Amsterdam in The Netherlands, director of the Earth System Governance Project of the International Human Dimensions Programme (IHDP) wrote the policy brief on institutional reform with 29 fellow social scientists and governance experts around the world.

Says Dr. Biermann: “Societies must change course to steer away from critical tipping points that lead to rapid and irreversible change. This requires a fundamental transformation of existing practices. The international governance system must change.”

“In the 1940s, large parts of the world lay in ruins amid fears of further political conflict. International systems were inadequate to deal with the global challenges then. Decision-makers created in very short time new organizations and global standards, including the U.N., the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (later the World Trade Organization), and others.”

“The current destruction of the Earth’s natural systems warrants today a similar ‘constitutional moment’ to revise and transform the architecture of global governance.”

Says IHDP executive director Anantha Duraiappah: “The governance systems created post-war have helped resolve conflict, promote globalization and spur unprecedented economic growth. Many societies have progressed in the past decades with an increase in well-being. The magic question is can this continue? As the world continues to become ever more interdependent we need new forms of governance.”

Improving international co-ordination is essential to deal not only with global-scale environmental and consequent security problems but to regulate proposed technological fixes, including nanotechnology, biotechnology and climate engineering.

Global-scale geo-engineering proposals to address climate change are too far-reaching and potentially dangerous to be left to the discretion of national governments or corporations, Dr. Biermann says. Multilateral frameworks are instead urgently needed.

“Tinkering with the existing international governance system is unlikely to improve matters sufficiently,” he says. “Fundamental reform is required for effective Earth-system governance.”

Among several recommendations:

Strengthen the system of international organizations for sustainable development by, for example:

• Upgrading the UN Commission on Sustainable Development to a Council of the UN General Assembly, to handle emerging issues such as water, climate, energy and food security, natural disasters and the linkages among these issues;
• Elevating the Nairobi-based UN Environment Programme to the status of the World Health Organization and International Labour Organization – a step that would give it greater authority, more secure funding and facilitate the creation and enforcement of international regulations and standards;
• Create special majority voting in decision-making systems when earth-system concerns are at stake.

Also recommended:

• Strengthening national accountability and legitimacy with, for example, mandatory disclosure of accessible, comprehensible and comparable data about government and corporate sustainability performance; and
• Allowing discrimination in world trade law between products on the basis of production processes to encourage investments in cleaner products and services. Such discrimination should be based on multilateral agreement to prevent protectionism.

Tools available

“We have tools to address our challenges effectively, but we’re quickly running out of time to put them in place,” says Planet Under Pressure conference co-chair Dr Mark Stafford Smith, science director of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization’s Climate Adaptation Flagship, in Canberra, Australia.

The international Planet Under Pressure conference will be the largest gathering of global change and sustainability scientists prior to the Rio+20 Earth Summit next June in Rio de Janeiro. The 3,000 global experts expected at the London conference will provide a “State of the Planet” assessment, discuss concepts for planetary stewardship and societal and economic transformation, and prescribe a recommended route to global sustainability.

Sponsored by the International Council for Science (ICSU), the conference is being organized by a consortium of four leading global research programmes: International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, DIVERSITAS-the international programme on biodiversity science, International Human Dimensions Programme on global environmental change, the World Climate Research Programme — collectively known as the Earth System Science Partnership.

Despite more than 900 environmental treaties coming into force in the past 40 years, human-induced environmental degradation continues, reaching levels that prompted ICSU’s blunt warning in 2010 that “humanity has reached a point in history at which a prerequisite for development – the continued functioning of the Earth system as we know it – is at risk.”

Authors of the policy briefs note recently published contentions that humanity has already pushed Earth past limits on climate change, biodiversity loss and nitrogen use — three of nine proposed “planetary boundaries” that must be respected for societies to grow and prosper.

Biodiversity

The brief on biodiversity and ecosystem services notes that despite recent efforts to reduce the rate of loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, the number of plant and animal species threatened with extinction continues to rise, forests and mangrove swamps are in sharp decline, and vast areas are increasingly dominated by a few successful species.

The brief offers new information detailing the fast-growing number of pollution-related oxygen depletion zones killing fish in coastal marine ecosystems — now more than 500 worldwide.

Consequences include the diminished ability of ecosystems to act as a buffer against extreme events such as floods, fires, disease outbreaks and storm surges. “If the global community continues on its current path, the declines in biodiversity and ecosystem services will impede future efforts towards sustainable development pathways,” the authors warn.

They call for a stronger inclusion of the multiple values of biodiversity and ecosystems into policy and management decisions, e.g. by measuring progress beyond traditional indicators such as the GDP. The concept of ‘inclusive wealth’ includes all forms of capital – natural (land, water, soil, biodiversity and ecosystem services), social (institutions, social networks) and human (education, health, skills) — as well as financial and manufactured.

“While current trends in biodiversity and ecosystem services are sharply and dangerously negative, the right actions — developed and implemented promptly — can restore a biologically rich and ecologically viable planet.” stresses Dr. Anne Larigauderie, executive director of DIVERSITAS and co-author of the brief.

Food security

Led by Oxford University Prof. John Ingram, authors of the food security brief say that despite a marked increase in global food production over the past half century, nearly one billion people still have too little to eat, and a further billion lack adequate nutrition. It showcases a new indicator of food security — children under the age of five suffer stunted growth due to inadequate food — and offers a map showing that in much of the world, the problem affects 40 per cent or more of children.

While the brief calls for the urgent development of policies and technologies for increasing food production in a more sustainable manner, it highlights the need for a food system that recognizes that improving access to food is the key issue to reduce food insecurity, rather than concentrating solely on increasing production.

“The challenge of feeding the world efficiently and equitably is considerable, but not insurmountable,” the authors say. “Institutions operating effectively at multiple levels will be at the centre of sustainable food systems; these will need to be flexible, promote appropriate use of innovative technologies and policies, and recognize the increasingly important role of non-state actors in enhancing food systems. Above all, there is need for a strong focus on resilience, equity and sustainability.”

Water security

As global population has tripled in the past century, water use has increased six-fold, and the quality of water resources has been degraded through human activities such as excessive use of agriculture-related chemicals and the release of untreated sewage and industrial wastewater.

Combined with growing economies and poor water management, unprecedented pressure is being placed on freshwater resources.

The policy document recommends that water be given high priority in international decision-making, and that compromises between use and preservation be made on the basis of science rather than political or economic lobbying. It also calls for laws and financial mechanisms to ensure sustainable water supplies.

“We simply cannot continue to use water as wastefully as we have in the past,” says lead author Janos Bogardi, Executive Officer of the Joint ESSP Global Water Systems Project. “Water must be given the prominence it deserves on the global agenda; decisions should be considered through a ‘water lens’.”

Interconnected risks and solutions

The financial crisis highlights our vulnerability as a direct result of our growing interconnectivity. The brief on interconnected risks and solutions underlines underlines the requirement for an integrated approach to a suite of urgent global challenges: poverty alleviation; the financial crisis; economic development; political stability; pollution; food, water and energy security; health; wellbeing; climate change; ocean acidification; and loss of biodiversity to name just some.

Systemic risk management should be a priority for international organizations.

The experts call for an end to the fragmented approach to interconnected global challenges and suggest establishing an international high-level consultative body on global sustainability. Beneath this, they suggest an Intergovernmental Panel on Sustainable Development to ensure scientific coherence and build on existing assessments for example the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, and to ensure scientific coherence. This would produce a regular ‘State of the Planet’ assessment that includes socio-economic indicators.

They also call on societies to “build resilience and prepare for unavoidable changes.”

Professor Sybil Seitzinger, Executive Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme say, “The great acceleration in human activity, seen largely since the 1950s, has committed the Earth system to substantial change, not only this century but also for hundreds and even thousands of years to come.”

Future policy briefs will offer insights and recommendations on the green economy, energy security, health, and human well-being.

Planet Under Pressure (www.planetunderpressure2012.net)

The Planet Under Pressure conference’s chief scientific advisor, Elinor Ostrom, has commissioned a series of policy briefs relevant to Rio+20. These policy briefs have been independently produced by the academic community and will be supported by white papers to be published for the Planet Under Pressure conference. The conference provides a platform for independent, impartial research. The views and the recommendations expressed in the policy briefs should not be taken to reflect the views of all programme sponsors.

Conference structure:

Monday March 26: State of the Planet: latest knowledge about the pressures on the planet

Tuesday March 27: Options and opportunities: exchanging knowledge about ways of reducing the pressures on the planet, promoting transformative changes for a sustainable future and adapting to changes in the global system

Wednesday March 29: Challenges to progress: clarifying what is preventing or slowing humanity from implementing potential solutions

Thursday March 30: Ways ahead: a vision for 2050 and beyond, and exploring new partnerships and pathways towards global sustainability

Themes:
Meeting global needs: food, energy, water and other ecosystem services
Transforming our way of living: development pathways under global environmental change
Governing across scales: innovative stewardship of the Earth system

For more details: www.planetunderpressure2012.net/themes.asp
Conference sessions: www.planetunderpressure2012.net/sessions.asp
Mailing list: http://www.planetunderpressure2012.net/mailinglist.asp
Registration for journalists: 1 December 2011 www.planetunderpressure2012.net

Sponsor

International Council for Science

Founded in 1931, Paris-based ICSU is a non-governmental organization with a global membership of national scientific bodies (121 Members, representing 141 countries) and International Scientific Unions (30 Members). The Council is frequently called upon to speak on behalf of the global scientific community and to act as an advisor in matters ranging from the environment to conduct in science. ICSU’s activities focus on three areas: planning and coordinating research; science for policy; and strengthening the Universality of Science.

Organizers

The Earth System Science Partnership

Based in Paris, France, the ESSP has been created for the integrated study of change in the Earth System and the implications for global and regional sustainability. There are four institutional partners:

International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme

Based in Stockholm, Sweden, IGBP was launched in 1987 to coordinate international research on global-scale and regional-scale interactions between Earth’s biological, chemical and physical processes and their interactions with human systems. IGBP views the Earth system as the Earth’s natural physical, chemical and biological cycles and processes AND the social and economic dimensions.

DIVERSITAS

Paris-based DIVERSITAS is an international programme of biodiversity science with a dual mission: To promote an integrative biodiversity science, linking biological, ecological and social disciplines in an effort to produce socially relevant new knowledge; and to provide the scientific basis for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.

International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change

Based in Bonn, Germany, IHDP fosters original research into human behaviours and actions relevant to global environmental changes. IHDP builds international, multi-disciplinary teams of scientists to conduct integrated, long-term collaborative research and adds value by strengthening the voice and impact of a huge network of individual scientists and research initiatives. The Earth System Governance Project is one of IHDP’s core projects and has compiled the Policy Brief on the Institutional Framework for Sustainable Development.

World Climate Research Programme

Based in Geneva, Switzerland, WCRP’s two overarching objectives are to determine the predictability of climate and to determine the effect of human activities on climate. WCRP facilitates analysis and prediction of Earth system variability and change for use in an increasing range of practical applications of direct relevance, benefit and value to society.

Contact: Terry Collins
tc@tca.tc
416-538-8712
Earth System Science Partnership

The analysis also shows that the world faces major environmental challenges unless agricultural practices change.

Scientists David Tilman and Jason Hill of the University of Minnesota (UMN) and colleagues found that producing the amount of food needed could significantly increase levels of carbon dioxide and nitrogen in the environment, and may cause the extinction of numerous species.

These problems can be avoided, the researchers say, if the high-yielding technologies of wealthier nations are adapted to work in poorer nations, and if all countries use nitrogen fertilizers more efficiently.

In their paper, the scientists explore various ways of meeting the demand for food, and their environmental effects.

The options, they found, are to increase productivity on existing agricultural land, clear more land, or a combination of both.

They also consider various scenarios in which the amount of nitrogen use, land cleared, and resulting greenhouse gas emissions differ.

“Agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions could double by 2050 if current trends in global food production continue,” Tilman said. “This would be a major problem, since global agriculture already accounts for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions.”

“Ever increasing global demands for food pit environmental health against human prosperity,” said Saran Twombly, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research.

“These assessments show that agricultural intensification, through improved agronomic practices and technology transfer, best ensure the latter with minimal costs to the former,” Twombly said.

“The results challenge wealthy nations to invest technologically in underyielding nations to alter the current global trajectory of agricultural expansion,” she believes. “Identifying the economic and political incentives needed to realize this investment is the critical next step.”

The environmental effects of meeting the demand for food depend on how global agriculture expands.

The research shows that adopting nitrogen-efficient “intensive” farming can meet future global food demand with much lower environmental effects, vs. the “extensive” farming practiced by many poor nations, which clears land to produce more food.

The potential benefits are great, the researchers believe.

In 2005, crop yields for the wealthiest nations were more than 300 percent higher than yields for the poorest nations.

“Strategically intensifying crop production in developing and least-developed nations would reduce the overall environmental harm caused by food production, as well as provide a more equitable food supply across the globe,” said Hill.

If poorer nations continue current practices, they will clear a land area larger than the United States (two and a half billion acres) by 2050. But if richer nations help poorer nations to improve yields, that number could be reduced to half a billion acres.

“Our analyses show that we can save most of the Earth’s remaining ecosystems,” said Tilman, “by helping the poorer nations of the world feed themselves.”

Scientists Christian Balzer of the University of California Santa Barbara and Belinda Befort of UMN are also co-authors of the paper.

Contact: Cheryl Dybas,
cdybas@nsf.gov
703-292-7734
National Science Foundation

Ignacio Ortuño Ortín, researcher at the Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M) and co-author of the study that was published in the Journal of Economic Growth states that “our method quantitatively analyses the stability and disintegration of European nations. It also estimates the implicit benefits of a larger European Union or, in other words, what would happen if the EU were one country. Furthermore, we give empirical support for the use of genetics as an indicator of cultural heterogeneity amongst nations.”

It has always been common knowledge that the more nations that join together in unity, the greater the profits. This is because the market gets bigger and costs are shared. On the other hand, when many regions or countries are brought together there is a difference in populations, both economically and culturally. This, in turn, implies a high cost. There was a need for methodology that quantitatively analyses these two aspects using specific cases.

A group of researchers from the UC3M, the Toulouse School of Economics (France), the Southern Methodist University (Dallas, USA) and the New Moscow School of Economics (Russia) have worked on this.

The mathematical model that they put forward includes factors such as a country’s wealth alongside size and cultural differences in terms of population genetics. According to the expert, the most difficult aspect to quantify when making predictions is the ‘measurement’ of countries from a cultural point of view. Ortuño guarantees that this is the most original part of the study. We take population genetics data and then use it to support the fact that such genetic distance between regions can be used as a good tool when approaching cultural distance.

According to the scientists, this does not suggest that genetics explains culture but that there is a correlation between the two. This means that populations that have mixed more display greater cultural similarity. “We are not saying that genes explain the way a person thinks,” clarifies Ortuño.

In order to put consistency of their model to the test, a real-life case was chosen: the disintegration of Yugoslavia. The authors of the study found that the economic differences between its republics determined the order of disintegration – a fact that coincided with their model. Likewise, cultural differences, although small, played a key role in triggering instability.

Predictions for other countries

The model’s first theoretical predictions were made by pairing two countries based on the hypothetical situation of Europe being a single country and on the regions that are more prone to separate from their current nation.

If the European Union were to become stronger and had a common fiscal as well as monetary policy (both of which together would turn it into a single country), in the long run, Greece and Portugal would benefit the most. In terms of percentages, Portugal would benefit from an increase in wealth of 13%, Greece would see an increase of 11.9% and Ireland with 8.9% and Finland with 8% would follow. Spain would see a growth of 4.1% whereas those countries that would benefit least would be Germany, followed by Italy and then France.

The researchers have also predicted what regions have more incentives to separate from the nations to which they belong. “We are not suggesting that it would be beneficial for these regions to separate but it is true that, in relative terms, the Basque Country and Scotland have more incentives,” they claim.

According to the model, those that are more inclined to pair up would be Austria and Switzerland, Denmark and Norway and France with Great Britain. Spain would be more interested in uniting with France but “this does not necessarily mean that France would be interested in uniting with Spain,” says Ortuño. He adds that “we avoid taking the strategic decisions of countries into account. This means that our model predicts how much a country would benefit if a union were to occur.”

The team is currently working on a new project with collaborators in Moscow who are applying the same method to understand the stability of regions in Russia.

References:

Klaus Desmet, Michel Le Breton, Ignacio Ortuño-Ortín, Shlomo Weber. “The stability and breakup of nations: a quantitative analysis”, Jourmal of Economic Growth 16:183, 2011. DOI 10.1007/s10887-011-9068-z

Contact: SINC
info@agenciasinc.es
34-914-251-820
FECYT – Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology

“The ideological divide over approaches to farm production are a distraction from the actions needed to address food security now and ensure it in the future,” said Nteranya Sanginga, director general designate of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). “Persistently high food prices and low farm yields are weakening Central Africa’s food security and putting the region’s fragile stability and economic growth at risk.”

“Climate change, rapid population growth, and intense land pressure are major challenges for the region. It’s time to focus on practical, evidence-based solutions that will forever end the cycle of hunger, poverty and civil conflict,” he added.

Over 200 leading African and international scientists met at the first conference of the Consortium for Improving Agriculture Based Livelihoods in Central Africa (CIALCA) in Kigali, Rwanda, this week. Participants identified several practical solutions that would help move the region towards a food security. These include scaling up farmer adoption of new technologies that improve degraded soils through more efficient use of inorganic fertilizers, new higher-yielding varieties of staple crops that improve nutrition, and mixed farming and intercropping approaches for crops like banana, coffee, and grain legumes.

“For many, fertilizer is a dirty word,” said Bernard Vanlauwe, acting director of the Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility research area at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). “We have to focus on approaches that improve livelihoods.”

“It does not have to be a choice between organic or inorganic; both approaches can work well together at different stages in agricultural development,” said Vanlauwe.

Participants at the CIALCA conference reached consensus that agricultural research and development efforts should focus on the middle ground, increasingly referred to as sustainable intensification, which combines the most effective and sustainable approaches to improving farm yields.

“Sustainable Intensification is the best way to tackle rural poverty and hunger in regions with huge land and population pressures,” said Vanlauwe.

Fertilizer use in Africa is by far the lowest in the world. On average, African farmers apply about 9 kg per hectare of fertilizer compared to 86 kg per hectare in Latin America and 142 kg per hectare in Southeast Asia.

“African agriculture is already organic. It’s not working,” said Sanginga. “We need to focus on practical things that help, not ideology.”

Agricultural researchers have found ways to dramatically reduce fertilizer use – while boosting crop yields. These include site-specific recommendations, partly based on detailed satellite images of African soils, and a technique known as micro-dosing, which involves the application of small, affordable quantities of fertilizer during a crop’s growing period.

New research by CIALCA scientists has shown that intercropping banana and coffee can benefit both the environment and farmers’ incomes compared to growing each crop separately. Banana — a food staple for millions across the region — provides a shaded canopy for coffee plants, which results in higher yields, less soil erosion, and more money for the farmers. Scientists also noted that this approach is ‘climate smart’ because the shade could buffer heat-sensitive coffee crops against the predicted impacts of climate change.

Improved climbing bean varieties being grown by thousands of farmers in the region have been particularly well-received, producing three times the yield of ordinary bush beans. On tightly-packed, small farms, the new bean varieties make valuable use of limited space by growing upwards instead of sprawling outwards. They also improve soil fertility through nitrogen fixation, and when grown in rotation with maize – another crucial African staple – maize yields have increased substantially, and the need for fertilizer reduced.

At the close of the CIALCA conference today, participants will recommend the priority actions for agricultural research and development efforts in Central Africa. For outcomes and updates, please visit http://CIALCAconference.org.

Since 2006, CIALCA, which is led by International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Bioversity International, and Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility Institute of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (TSBF-CIAT), has been working with public and private sector partners to make improvements to farm production, market access, and child nutrition in Central Africa’s Great Lakes region.

For stories, interviews and updates on discussions at the conference, please visit: http://www.cialcaconference.org and join the conversation on Twitter using #CIALCA. More information can be found at http://www.cialca.org.

Jeff Haskins
254-729-871-422
jhaskins@burnesscommunications.com

Michelle Geis
mgeis@burnesscommunications.com
254-706-348-938
Burness Communications

Meanwhile, current agricultural practices are amongst the biggest threats to the global environment. This means that if we don’t develop more sustainable practices, the planet will become even less able to feed its growing population than it is today.

But now a team of researchers from Canada, the U.S., Sweden and Germany has come up with a plan to double the world’s food production while reducing the environmental impacts of agriculture. Their findings were recently published in the journal Nature.

By combining information gathered from crop records and satellite images from around the world, they have been able to create new models of agricultural systems and their environmental impacts that are truly global in scope.

McGill geography professor Navin Ramankutty, one of the team leaders on the study, credits the collaboration between researchers for achieving such important results. “Lots of other scholars and thinkers have proposed solutions to global food and environmental problems. But they were often fragmented, only looking at one aspect of the problem at one time. And they often lacked the specifics and numbers to back them up. This is the first time that such a wide range of data has been brought together under one common framework, and it has allowed us to see some clear patterns. This makes it easier to develop some concrete solutions for the problems facing us.”

A five-point plan for feeding the world while protecting the planet

The researchers recommend:

1. Halting farmland expansion and land clearing for agricultural purposes, particularly in the tropical rainforest. This can be achieved using incentives such as payment for ecosystem services, certification and ecotourism. This change will yield huge environmental benefits without dramatically cutting into agricultural production or economic well-being.
2. Improving agricultural yields. Many farming regions in Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe are not living up to their potential for producing crops – something known as “yield gaps”. Improved use of existing crop varieties, better management and improved genetics could increase current food production nearly by 60 per cent.
3. Supplementing the land more strategically. Current use of water, nutrients and agricultural chemicals suffers from what the research team calls “Goldilocks’ Problem”: too much in some places, too little in others, rarely just right. Strategic reallocation could substantially boost the benefit we get from precious inputs.
4. Shifting diets. Growing animal feed or biofuels on prime croplands, no matter how efficiently, is a drain on human food supply. Dedicating croplands to direct human food production could boost calories produced per person by nearly 50 per cent. Even shifting nonfood uses such as animal feed or biofuel production away from prime cropland could make a big difference.
5. Reducing waste. One-third of the food produced by farms ends up discarded, spoiled or eaten by pests. Eliminating waste in the path that food takes from farm to mouth could boost food available for consumption another 50 per cent.

The study also outlines approaches to the problem that would help policy-makers reach informed decisions about the agricultural choices facing them. “For the first time, we have shown that it is possible to both feed a hungry world and protect a threatened planet,” said lead author Jonathan Foley, head of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment. “It will take serious work. But we can do it.”

Contact: Katherine Gombay
katherine.gombay@mcgill.ca
514-398-2189
McGill University

When nearly 40 million Nigerians took to the polls last April to elect a new president, many of them went online to share comments about their chosen candidates on blogs, Twitter or other social media platforms. They also used these new media tools to report what they saw. “Listening” to much of it was Georgia Tech Associate Professor Michael Best, which just might have saved a few lives.

During the election, Best provided technical support for a Nigerian group that wanted to use social media as a means for tracking the election process and identifying any problems that cropped up. Best and his team of researchers designed a social media aggregator tool that could pull content from about 20 different sources (including Twitter) and analyze the data in real time using keywords.

At the peak of activity, the aggregator tracked about 50 reports per second and analyzed them based on keywords and (sometimes) location data. The Nigerian Social Media Tracking Centre, formed just before the election by the organization Best was supporting, forwarded along confirmable reports of election irregularities and ultimately reports of violence to Nigerian authorities. All together the aggregator collected about 750,000 reports containing pre-identified keywords, and following the election the SMTC issued a summary report that listed a series of recommendations for using social media and instant messaging to improve future election experiences, such as:

• Training civilian groups and voters to tweet election results
• Organizing SMS group accounts for both national and local election officials
• Establishing a central database to collate election results, and having local precincts send results via SMS
• Advising international monitoring organizations to partner with domestic groups that will monitor social media

Using social media as a means to gauge public response to political events is nothing new, but Best’s team is one of the first to use the practice in real time to help improve the electoral process itself, acknowledging that civilian reports can provide critical information. If violence erupts, the hours or even minutes saved by having identified the situation through social media posts could make a significant difference in response.

“Nigeria showed that this technology has legitimate and useful applications for monitoring elections or keeping a real-time pulse on any number of political or community issues,” said Best, an associate professor in the School of Interactive Computing and the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs. “Our ultimate goal is to delve deeper into the particulars of this, examining the information’s accuracy, depth, timeliness and scope, and comparing it along those dimensions to other sources of information.”

Tangibly, Best and team want to produce open-source software that can be used to monitor major events as a complementary tool to traditional monitoring techniques. For example, the National Democratic Institute and the European Union both sent observers to Nigeria for its April elections, and today Liberia will likewise see international teams on the ground, monitoring and reporting on the country’s electoral processes. How can crowdsourced election data compliment the work of trained formal observer missions? What impact will that data have? And what impact will Friday’s announcement that President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf will receive the Nobel Peace Prize have on the election?

“The nongovernmental organizations [NGOs] that do election monitoring are understandably leery of formally using this technology right now, because they don’t want to risk their data being tainted with unreliable citizen reports,” said Thomas Smyth, a Ph.D. student in Best’s lab. “However our research could open up new understandings of how social media function in election-like situations, and as the explosion of social media causes NGOs to refine their policies, it could be of interest to them.”

The stakes for Liberia’s election appeared to rise again on Friday, when it was announced that President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf will receive the Nobel Peace Prize. When the polls open at approximately 3 a.m. EST on Oct. 11, Best and a team of undergraduate and graduate students will be ready in a “situation room” on the Georgia Tech campus. Among the outlets to be followed are Twitter, Facebook public groups, SMS messaging and several other blogs and social media websites, including the open-source platform Ushahidi, popular in several African nations.

As reports begin to filter in, the aggregator will use posts clustering around certain keywords as evidence in a real-time organic catalogue of “curated incidents.” If the team identifies a situation it decides should be reported to Liberian authorities, Best has partnered with iLab Liberia, an information technology support organization, which will staff a “response room” in country.

“Social media and aggregate text messaging can, in a very real sense, be construed as a ‘cultural consciousness,’ and our goal is to show how you can take advantage of that for reasons other than marketing products or identifying pop culture trends,” Best said. “As we’re seeing through the ongoing ‘Arab Spring,’ these new technologies can be vital tools in service of democracy.”

In 2012, Best hopes to employ the aggregator in monitoring elections in Kenya, Senegal and the new nation of South Sudan.

About the Georgia Tech College of Computing

The Georgia Tech College of Computing is a national leader in the creation of real-world computing breakthroughs that drive social and scientific progress. With its graduate program ranked 10th nationally by U.S. News and World Report, the College’s unconventional approach to education is defining the new face of computing by expanding the horizons of traditional computer science students through interdisciplinary collaboration and a focus on human centered solutions. For more information about the Georgia Tech College of Computing, its academic divisions and research centers, please visit http://www.cc.gatech.edu.

About The Georgia Institute of Technology

The Georgia Institute of Technology is one of the world’s premier research universities. Ranked seventh among U.S. News & World Report’s top public universities and the eighth best engineering and information technology university in the world by Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Academic Ranking of World Universities, Georgia Tech’s more than 20,000 students are enrolled in its Colleges of Architecture, Computing, Engineering, Liberal Arts, Management and Sciences. Tech is among the nation’s top producers of women and minority engineers. The Institute offers research opportunities to both undergraduate and graduate students and is home to more than 100 interdisciplinary units plus the Georgia Tech Research Institute. http://www.gatech.edu

Contact: Michael Terrazas
mterraza@cc.gatech.edu
404-245-0707
Georgia Institute of Technology

Last year, for instance, China restricted the export of neodymium, which is used in wind energy generators. The move was ostensibly to direct the supplies to toward a massive wind generation project within China. The effect, however, is to create a two-tiered price for neodymium: one inside China and another, higher price, for the rest of the world, explained economics professor Roderick Eggert of the Colorado School of Mines. The result could be that China not only will control the neodymium supply, but the manufacture of neodymium technology as well.

The geopolitical implications of critical minerals have started bringing together scientists, economists and policy makers who are trying to cut a path through the growing thicket of challenges. In that spirit, on Monday, 10 October, 2011, Eggert and other professors will be presenting their research alongside senior staff from the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, the Executive Office of the President of the U.S., the U.S. Geological Survey, in a session at the meeting of The Geological Society of America in Minneapolis.

Among the basics that need to be grasped to understand the current state of affairs is how rare these minerals and elements really are. Some are plentiful, but only found in rare places or are difficult to extract. Indium, for instance, is a byproduct of zinc mining and extraction. It is not economically viable to extract unless zinc is being sought in the same ore, Eggert explained, Others are just plain scarce, like rhenium and tellurium, which only exist in very small amounts in the Earth’s crust.

There are basically two responses to this sort of situation: use less of these minerals or improve the extraction of them from other ores in other parts of the world. The latter would seem to be where most people are heading.

“China’s efforts to restrict exports of mineral commodities garnered the attention of Congress and highlighted the need for the United States to assess the state of the Nation’s mineral policies and examine opportunities to produce rare earths and other strategic and critical minerals domestically,” reads the session abstract of Kathleen Benedetto of the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, Committee on Natural Resources, U.S. House of Representatives. “Nine bills have been introduced in the House and Senate to address supply disruptions of rare earths and other important mineral commodities.”

Benedetto will be explaining the meaning and status of those bills, and what it will take to get them signed into law.

“Deposits of rare earth elements and other critical minerals occur throughout the Nation,” reads the abstract for another prominent session presenter: Marcia McNutt, director of the U.S. Geological Survey. She will be putting the current events in the larger historical perspective of mineral resource management, which has been the USGS’s job for more than 130 years. “The definition of ‘a critical mineral or material’ is extremely time dependent, as advances in materials science yield new products and the adoption of new technologies result in shifts in both supply and demand.”

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has answered the call as well. An abstract by OSTP Assistant Director Cyrus Wadia provides a five-point strategy to begin addressing the matter. The first point is to mitigating long term risks associated with the use of critical materials. The second, diversify supplies of raw materials. Third, to promote a domestic supply chain for areas of strategic importance like clean energy. Fourth, inform decision makers; and fifth, prepare the workforce of the next generation.

Contact:
Session Chair, Craig Schiffries
Director for Geoscience Policy
The Geological Society of America
cschiffries@geosociety.org

WHAT: Session No. 124 Rare Earth Elements and Critical Minerals for a Sustainable and Secure Future http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2011AM/finalprogram/session_28509.htm

WHEN: 1:30 PM-5:30 PM, Monday, 10 October 2001

WHERE: Minneapolis Convention Center: Room 101A-C

http://www.geosociety.org

Contact: Christa Stratton
cstratton@geosociety.org
Geological Society of America

In the ‘online romance scam’ criminals set up fake identities using stolen photographs (often of models or army officers) and pretend to develop a romantic relationship with their victim. This is often done using online dating sites and social networking sites. At some point during the relationship they pretend to be in urgent need of money and ask for help. Many victims have been persuaded to part with large sums of money before their suspicions are aroused.

Researchers found that 52% of people surveyed online had heard of the online romance scam when it was explained to them, and that one in every 50 online adults (2%) know someone personally who had fallen victim to it.

This confirms the belief held by law enforcement agencies that this type of crime is often not reported by those affected, in many cases due to embarrassment at having been duped, or through a continuing hope that there will eventually be a genuine romance

The study led by Professor Monica Whitty, a psychologist and Professor of Contemporary Media at the University of Leicester, and Dr Tom Buchanan, a psychologist at the University of Westminster. It aimed to investigate the prevalence of victims in Great Britain and learn how widely the crime is known, as well as how people are learning about it.

Action Fraud, the national fraud reporting and advice centre run by the National Fraud Authority, identified 592 victims of this crime between 2010-11. Of these victims, 203 individuals lost over £5,000.

According to the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) romance fraud is organised crime, usually operating from outside the UK. Criminal groups make initial contact with potential victims through online dating sites and social networking sites, and will try to move the ‘relationship’ away from monitored online space before defrauding people of what can amount to large sums of money.

In some cases, even when victims cannot, or will not, send money, scammers involve them instead in money laundering by asking them to accept money into their bank accounts.

Investigations by SOCA have seen financial losses experienced by victims of online romance scams of between £50 and £240,000. Scammers’ victims also suffer what is effectively a bereavement, from the loss of a relationship they believed to be genuine.

The researchers surveyed over 2,000 people through an online YouGov survey and estimated from the results that over two hundred thousand British citizens have fallen victim to the crime. They further estimate over 1 million people personally know someone who has been scammed.

Professor Whitty, said: “Our data suggests that the numbers of British victims of this relatively new crime is much higher than reported incidents would suggest. It also confirms law enforcement suspicions that this is an under-reported crime, and thus more serious than first thought.

“This is a concern not solely because people are losing large sums of money to these criminals, but also because of the psychological impact experienced by victims of this crime.

“It is our view that the trauma caused by this scam is worse than any other, because of the ‘double hit’ experienced by the victims – loss of monies and a ‘romantic relationship’.

“It may well be that the shame and upset experienced by the victims deters them from reporting the crime. We thus believe new methods of reporting the crime are needed.”

Professor Whitty added that the results of the research suggest warnings about the fraud are reaching about half of the British population: “This provides us with a marker for future research in preventive measures. It may well be, of course, that knowledge of the crime does not prevent it. However, it is important to compare knowledge of the crime and number of victims in future studies.”

SOCA’s Colin Woodcock, Senior Manager for Fraud Prevention, said:

“SOCA has worked hard to understand the nature of this crime and how it can be tackled, and this study provides further insights into the extent to which it is affecting people in the UK. The fact that 52% of respondents were aware of romance scams shows that progress has been made in raising awareness, but also that millions of people in the UK remain at risk of being successfully targeted by the crime groups committing this type of fraud.

“The perpetrators spend long periods of time grooming their victims, working out their vulnerabilities and when the time is right to ask for money. By being aware of how to stay safe online, members of the UK public can ensure they don’t join those who have lost nearly every penny they had, been robbed of their self-respect, and in some cases, committed suicide after being exploited, relentlessly, by these criminals. It is crucial that nobody sends money to someone they meet online, and haven’t got to know well and in person.”

Notes to Editors:

Further details are available from Professor Monica Whitty, Professor of Contemporary Media, Department of Media and Communication, University of Leicester, email mw229@le.ac.uk

Or contact University of Leicester Press office 0116 252 2415; pressoffice@le.ac.uk

All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 2028 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 6th – 8th July 2011. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all GB adults (aged 18+).

Number of people scammed was devised by the following formula:

47,754,569 (British adults – source, Office of National Statistics)*.0065 (percentage of sample who were scammed) *.74 (British adults online)

Number of people who know someone scammed was devised by the following formula: 47,754,569 (British adults – source, Office of National Statistics*0.0228(percentage of sample who knew someone scammed)

The research also investigated the effectiveness of media targeting to alert people to online scams and suggests the need to utilise radio more effectively to disseminate knowledge about the online romance scam.

Professor Whitty carried out the survey with Dr Tom Buchanan, a psychologist at the University of Westminster; YouGov, a professional research and consulting organization; and SOCA (Serious Organised Crime Agency).

Contact: Professor Monica Whitty
mw229@le.ac.uk
University of Leicester