CABI Blogs: hand picked... and carefully sorted

Chocolate SDGs unwrapped

 

“The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), otherwise known as the Global Goals, are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity.”¹

Should we prioritise chocolate in this universal call to action?

Threats to the cocoa industry including low productivity, marketing challenges, pests and disease, environmental concerns and access to education, pests and disease, environmental concerns and educational access, are predicted to cause a global supply shortage of 1 million tonnes by 2020.

Without understanding something of the lives and livelihoods producing this dietary indulgence you’d consider this issue a first world problem - so what? I’ll just have to skip that mid-afternoon choccy pick-me-up. No big deal.

Universal health coverage: everyone, everywhere…what about cancer?

 

I’ve written about universal health coverage (UHC) before in the context of what’s covered under UHC in one country is not the same as another [Universal health coverage gains momentum in 2016] although there are agreed basics, the essential health services to deliver “health for all”.  The World Health Organization is focusing its efforts on supporting countries moving to UHC, and keeping the pressure on by running high profile events throughout 2018 on UHC beginning with  World Health Day, April 7^th.

Water, tourism and gender – how tourism can increase inequalities. From the work of Dr Stroma Cole

March 22 is World Water Day, designated to focus our attention on the importance of water. The theme for World Water Day 2018 is ‘Nature for Water’ – exploring nature-based solutions to the water challenges we face in the 21st century. But of course water is essential for life, and thus affects every aspect of human development, as well as the ecosystems that support us. Today, 2.1 billion people still live without safe drinking water at home; affecting their health, education and livelihoods. Earlier this week, on a visit to CABI Headquarters in Wallingford, CABI book author Dr Stroma Cole gave a talk on gender equality and tourism in which, with World Water Day this week, she focused particularly on water issues, and how women bear the brunt of the problems which can be created when tourism development increases demand for water. Dr Cole, a senior lecturer in tourism geography at the University of the West of England and a Director of Equality in Tourism, has worked on tourism and water inequality in Indonesia, Costa Rica and India, and in her presentation focused particularly on the situation in Labuan Bajo, a rapidly growing gateway town to Komodo National Park in Indonesia.

"Food Forests can be a part of Urban Cultivation" by Antoinette WinklerPrins

Urban cultivation (UC) refers to a range of practices at various scales that include the growing, processing, and marketing of crops (often called urban agriculture), the tending of livestock, and apiculture, in urban and peri-urban areas, mostly for consumption in the same urban space (WinklerPrins 2017). According to the United Nations, the world population is increasingly urbanizing, currently at about 54% but trending toward at least 66% by 2050, and with much higher rates in many parts of the globe (UN 2014). 

Family-centric cinema: a Q&A on changing the conversation for women in agriculture

Women need first-hand information and knowledge about new agricultural technologies to have a say on how family farms are run, according to Dannie Romney, Global Director, Development, Communication and Extension, CABI.

Dannie is currently Project Executive for the Africa Soil Health Consortium (ASHC) and Gender and the Legume Alliance (GALA) projects working jointly in Ghana. 

Understanding that families are a unit of production directs how the GALA project supports small-scale farming households to achieve sustainable legume intensification.

The project team recognise the gender issues involved and the constraints women may face in adopting a family-centric learning approach. The first step is to improve their access to information and knowledge on farming techniques.

World Book Day 2018 - Our Favourite Books

CABI staff are celebrating World Book Day with some of their favourite books! We’re proud of our diverse range of titles, relevant for students, researchers and professionals across a range of subjects. Here are some of our top picks from 2017, and what we enjoyed about working on them. You can read sample chapters of each book here.