Ecology & Sustainability

This essay adopts broader conceptual analysis on technology deployment for social change. It looks at how data-driven technologies are currently deployed to solve problems. And makes a case for why we cannot leave the challenges posed by data-driven technologies to technologists.

The massive use of plastics has created an enormous global problem with environmental, economic, social, and health repercussions. The only viable solution to the problem would therefore be to stop plastic waste from entering the oceans in the first place. The authors of this paper propose to launch negotiations on a plastics convention and begin to end this irresponsible disaster.

Species are vanishing at such high speed that researchers are talking in terms of a sixth major mass extinction happening within human history. This introductory publication clarifies the vital development-policy significance of the discussion over biodiversity.

Imagine that by releasing a single fly into the wild you could genetically alter all the flies on the planet. This is the terrifyingly powerful premise behind gene drives: a new and controversial genetic engineering technology that can permanently alter an entire species by releasing one bioengineered individual. Civil society groups are alarmed by this newfound ability to reshape the natural world.

While it is broadly recognised that hunger is a function of entitlements and not of food availability as such, there is still a vacuum in research and development education with regard to introducing a human rights and governance lens to teaching. This paper showes how this can be done.

The level of political commitment in the build up to Paris means a deal is very likely. But, the devil will be in the detail. The final Policy Brief of the "From Warsaw to Paris" series discusses how to communicate the COP21 outcome and what the outcomes of Paris mean for the EU’s 2016 climate and energy agenda.

The study focuses on the impact on security and development by the Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India gas pipeline (TAPI), which is one of the most ambitious and long debated infrastructure projects in Afghanistan.

The extreme genetic engineering industry of Synthetic Biology (Syn Bio) is shrugging off earlier pretensions that it would usher in a clean, green ’post-petroleum’ economy. Now they are partnering with big oil, coal, gas and mining interests. This report details this emerging fossilbiotech alliance.

This paper will explore where the recent initiatives aimed at "ending the economic invisibility of nature" differ from previous approaches to economic valuation of nature.