Environment Archive

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series on food security around the world. African countries have long maintained some of the strictest regulations on genetically modified agriculture, with only four out of 47 countries across the continent allowing the planting of any genetically modified crops. Some countries, including Kenya and Nigeria, are mulling looser restrictions on imports and cultivation of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, but those moves will have limited significance for food security, says Robert Paarlberg, an adjunct professor of public policy at Harvard University who specializes in global food and agricultural policy. In an […]

Last week, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, or IPBES, put out a call to arms to save endangered species and ecosystems. The body’s report, titled “Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services,” was based on the work of hundreds of scientists and thousands of scientific studies. It warned that no fewer than a million animal and plant species are at risk of extinction around the globe. “Biodiversity is declining faster than at any time in human history,” the report lamented—and humans are to blame. We have long taken the innumerable goods that nature provides […]