The Royal Society has launched a new study on ‘Biological Approaches to Enhance Food Crop Production’. The study aims to provide a balanced assessment of the challenges to world food-crop production, the different biological approaches that could be used to enhance supplies and their likely consequences and impacts.

The Society is seeking the views of agriculturalists, bioscientists, academics, policy-makers, industrialists and other interested parties to inform the study. Organisations and individuals are invited to contribute to the study by responding to the call for evidence by Monday 06 October 2008. Evidence should be submitted to Sarah Mee at the Royal Society (sarah.mee@royalsociety.org).

The working group leading the study will report on its findings in summer 2009.

New research by the London-based Overseas Development Institute (ODI) indicates the value of intermediary organisations, such as the BES, in bridging the divide between science and policy. Although the research focused on the interface between science and development policy, they can equally be applied to science to ecology/ environmental policy-making. The research has been published as part of the ODI’s RAPID programme (Research and Policy in Development).

More than 600 scientists, intermediaries and policy-makers responded to an electronic survey from the ODI, launched in summer 2007. The findings were combined with a literature review and case studies to generate the conclusions of the project.

The review and case-studies show that, in the developing world particularly, close personal relationships between scientists and policy-makers are extremely important.

Two-thirds of the stakeholders surveyed by the ODI stated that a lack of understanding by policy-makers was a major obstacle to getting scientific information into policy. Poor dissemination of research findings was also identified as a hindrance. Policy-makers found opportunities to exchange opinions with scientists, and other forms of personal interaction, the most valuable means to increase their engagement with the science community.

The BES plays an important role in building the relationships between scientists and policy-makers highlighted as so important by this research. Our Ministerial Shadowing Scheme allows early-career ecologists to spend several days shadowing a Minister or government official, experiencing first-hand how the policy-making process works. The BES also organises workshops each year to bring policy-makers and scientists closer together, so building networks of collaboration.

Access the ODI’s report
Find out more about the BES’s Ministerial Shadowing Scheme and Policy Meetings.

Writing in a special edition of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, published today, scientists from around the world warn that radical solutions are needed to tackle climate change if the planet is to avert catastrophic global warming.

The scientists call for more research on geo-engineering options, including seeding the oceans with iron to stimulate the growth of marine algae and phytoplankton; thus capturing carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, and seeding artificial clouds over the oceans to reflect sunlight back into space. A study proposes building ships which could spray micrometre-sized drops of seawater into the air under stratocumulus clouds to make the whiter, whilst a second proposes the use of jumbo jets to deposit clouds of sulphur dioxide, these particles then reflecting away sunlight.

Critics argue that a focus on geo-engineering as a solution to climate change is a dangerous distraction from attempts to limit carbon dioxide pollution. It will also do nothing to ameliorate the ecological consequences of ocean acidification. Professor Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society argues: “it is worth devoting effort to clarifying the feasibility and any potential downsides of the various options. None of these technologies will provide a ‘get out of jail free card’ and they must not divert attention away from efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.”

See full article in the Guardian, 1 September 2008: Extreme and risky action the only way to tackle global warming, say scientists

Link to the Royal Society