8 November 2011: The ASB Partnership for Tropical Forest Margins (ASB) has produced a policy brief titled “Co-existence of people and orangutan in Sumatra: Stabilising gradients for landscape multifunctionality,” which examines the role of forest-agroforest-agricultural landscapes in orangutan habitat in Sumatra.
4 November 2011: A new study by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a centre of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), analyzes the question of indirect land-use change (ILUC) in relation to the EU's Renewable Energy Directive. It finds that ILUC issues are a valid concern, but that the impact depends on the type of feedstock crop used as well as other factors such liberalization of international trade in biofuels.
3 November 2011: EcoAgriculture Partners is carrying out the programming and planning for the international initiative on "Landscapes for People, Food and Nature" together with a group of eight co-organizers partners. This three-year collaborative initiative aims to scale up successful strategies that improve livelihoods and food security, conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services, and help address climate change.
28 October 2011: The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) has released the October edition of its News Update with a selection of stories on: protected area effectiveness; Indonesia's forestry concession ban; interactions between farms and biodiversity; Forest Day 5 at the 17th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 17 ) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC); and the Dry Forests Symposium.
October 2011: The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) has reported on the release of new wheat and maize varieties that are resistant to disease and adapted to climate change in China and Ethiopia.
29 September 2011: The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) has released a report titled "Predicting the Impact of Climate Change on the Cocoa-Growing Regions in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire," which predicts that a temperature rise of over 2ºC by 2050 would dramatically impact West Africa's cocoa-producing areas.
26 September 2011: The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) has released its September 2011 newsletter, noting the opening of registration for Forest Day at the 17th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 17) to the UNFCCC in Durban, South Africa, on 4 December 2011. The newsletter also features articles on REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of carbon stock), forest governance and climate change.
The biennial Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Science Forum brings together scientists, practitioners, policy makers and funding agents to examine emerging challenges, identify key researchable issues and form new partnerships to address them. The theme of Science Forum 2011 is ‘The Agriculture-Environment Nexus.' It will focus on new opportunities to adapt the agricultural research landscape to meet emerging challenges, such as: giving consideration to ecological efficiency in future agriculture; making agriculture and forestry net sinks of carbon and not sources; enabling agriculture to prosper with fewer non-renewable inputs; and developing innovative apporaches for a low-carbon agriculture that mitigates climate change. It is proposed that the debate at the Science Forum will be structured around the following themes: land saving and land transformation; resource scarcity and the ecological intensification of agriculture; metrics and monitoring; agro-biodiversity - can biodiverse systems compete in a global market?; sustainability science; and multifunctional landscapes. Science Forum 2011 will be hosted by the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) and is organized by a steering committee led by the Independent Science and Partnership Council (ISPC) of the CGIAR.
The event is jointly organized by Bioversity International, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and the World Food Programme (WFP). The meeting will focus on information technology for development, social media, knowledge sharing and green innovations to address food security and climate change.
21 September 2011: A Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) was signed between the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and 27 international agencies, organizations and environmental conventions, aiming to achieve and implement the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and its Aichi Biodiversity Targets.
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