Assessing Africa-wide pangolin exploitation by scaling local data

Overexploitation is one of the main pressures driving wildlife closer to extinction, yet broad-scale data to evaluate species’ declines are limited. Using African pangolins (Family: Pholidota) as a case study, we demonstrate that collating local-scale data can provide crucial information on regional trends in exploitation of threatened species to inform conservation actions and policy. We estimate that 0.4-2.7 million pangolins are hunted annually in Central African forests. The number of pangolins hunted has increased by ∼150% and the proportion of pangolins of all vertebrates hunted increased from 0.04% to 1.83% over the past four decades. However, there were no trends in pangolins observed at markets, suggesting use of alternative supply chains. The price of giant (Smutsia gigantea) and arboreal (Phataginus sp.) pangolins in urban markets has increased 5.8 and 2.3 times respectively, mirroring trends in Asian pangolins. Efforts and resources are needed to increase law enforcement and population monitoring, and investigate linkages between subsistence hunting and illegal wildlife trade

Ethical and Sociocultural Considerations of Biofortified Crops: Ensuring Value and Sustainability for Public Health

This chapter highlights ethical considerations related to biofortified crops and provides insights on how planned and implemented biofortification interventions can take into account sociocultural aspects to improve public health. A literature review of ethical and sociocultural issues was performed, as well as an analysis of biofortification using a public health ethics framework. The research suggests that biofortification has clear public health goals and has promise toward meeting those goals. Where there is a need for more research is to better understand the impacts of biofortification programs on issues of self-determination, liberties, and food justice, the burdens and nonmaleficence to society can be minimized. This can be done through early involvement of the community in research and programmatic strategies. Distributive justice issues, such as ensuring fair access to seeds and foods for farmers and consumers, ought to be considered

ONE CGIAR in Rwanda

CGIAR centers invest in technological and institutional innovations, partnerships, capacity development, and policy engagement to contribute to Rwanda’s agricultural transformation. This brief is a contribution of various One CGIAR centres in Rwanda. The centres are International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) , International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) through Pan Africa Bean Research Alliance, International Potato Center (CIP), International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security (CCAFS

Land suitability for energy crops under scenarios of climate change and land‐use

Bioenergy is expected to play a critical role in climate change mitigation. Most IAMs assume an expansion of agricultural land for cultivation of energy crops. This study examines the suitability of land for growing a range of energy crops on areas that are not required for food production, accounting for climate change impacts and conservation requirements. A global fuzzy‐logic model is employed to ascertain the suitable cropping areas for a number of sugar, starch and oil crops, energy grasses and short rotation tree species that could be grown specifically for energy. Two climate change scenarios are modelled (RCP2.6 and RCP8.5), along with two scenarios representing the land which cannot be used for energy crops due to forest and biodiversity conservation, food agriculture and urban areas. Results indicate that 40% of the global area currently suitable for energy crops overlaps with food land and 31% overlaps with forested or protected areas, highlighting hotspots of potential land competition risks. Approximately 18.8 million km2 is suitable for energy crops, to some degree, and does not overlap with protected, forested, urban or food agricultural land. Under the climate change scenario RCP8.5, this increases to 19.6 million km2 by the end of the century. Broadly, climate change is projected to decrease suitable areas in southern regions and increase them in northern regions, most notably for grass crops in Russia and China, indicating that potential production areas will shift northwards which could potentially affect domestic use and trade of biomass significantly. The majority of the land which becomes suitable is in current grasslands and is just marginally or moderately suitable. This study therefore highlights the vital importance of further studies examining the carbon and eco‐system balance of this potential land‐use change, energy crop yields in sub‐optimal soil and climatic conditions, and potential impacts on livelihoods