Representatives from more than 60 countries gathered in Rome today for a United Nations-backed meeting to promote the international treaty considered essential for the conservation and use of the world’s threatened plant genetic resources.The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources was adopted by the Conference of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 2001 to facilitate international cooperation and the fair exchange of genetic resources.The treaty’s Benefit-sharing Fund (BSF)...

Global agriculture contributes in the region of 17 percent to the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, but according to the World Bank, climate smart agriculture techniques can both reduce emissions and meet the challenge of producing enough food for a growing world population."As much as agriculture is part of the problem, it is also part of the solution," said Inger Anderson, the World Bank's vice president on sustainable...

A death threat to a historic 13-year-old international treaty on climate change that surfaced last year appears to have intensified and may stall progress at the UN climate change talks here in this scenic Mexican city. Several industrialised countries are opposing the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 treaty that had set legally binding targets only on industrialised countries for the reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases up to the...

A new food security report for Asia has been launched in Mumbai by The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the Asia Society, calling for increased investment in rice research. The report, Never an empty bowl: sustaining food security in Asia, emphasizes the importance of rice as the primary staple food in Asia and a major source of income for Asian farmers. It also recommends more research on: climate change mitigation for...

The sights are set on smaller, though just as important, issues With the first commitment to emission reductions under the Kyoto Protocol expiring in December 2012, the world is looking to a new regime of cuts, which is unlikely to be successfully negotiated here. In 2009, the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen set a target of achieving a binding treaty and it did not happen. Now the sights are set on...