Problems of Agricultural Policy Adaptation Within Sustainable Development Goals

The paper reveals problems of integrating national policy for increasing agricultural production and ecological consequences, including the important aspect of Russia’s ratification of the Paris Agreement on climate, which provides additional opportunities for a decrease in carbon emissions. Current government programs for agricultural development in Russia, which include but are not limited to production growth and increase in agricultural exports, do not take into account the ecological consequences of such growth. The paper analyzes how the agriculture of Russia has evolved in the recent period (2007-2017) and what amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions it has caused. Although in general emissions exhibited a decreasing trend, it was found that ploughing additional land for crop production had caused a large outburst of emissions from a small amount of land. Using the GLOBIOM partial equilibrium model, two scenarios of Russia's agricultural development until 2030 were formulated. The first one is intensive, with only a small amount of crop area growth but with a 45% increase in yields compared to current levels. The second scenario is an extensive one, with crop area growth of additional 6.4 million hectares and a total yield increase of 24% compared to current levels. Results have shown that crop and meat production increase in both scenarios, but the extensive one involves more emissions from additional ploughed land. To stop these kinds of practices, the recommendations would be to limit the ploughing of additional land and to improve statistical bookkeeping for a more accurate inclusion of land use and respective GHG emissions

A decentralized approach to model national and global food and land use systems

The achievement of several sustainable development goals and the Paris Climate Agreement depends on rapid progress towards sustainable food and land systems in all countries. We have built a flexible, collaborative modeling framework to foster the development of national pathways by local research teams and their integration up to global scale. Local researchers independently customize national models to explore mid-century pathways of the food and land use system transformation in collaboration with stakeholders. An online platform connects the national models, iteratively balances global exports and imports, and aggregates results to the global level. Our results show that actions toward greater sustainability in countries could sum up to 1 Mha net forest gain per year, 950 Mha net gain in the land where natural processes predominate, and an increased CO2 sink of 3.7 GtCO2e yr−1 over the period 2020–2050 compared to current trends, while average food consumption per capita remains above the adequate food requirements in all countries. We show examples of how the global linkage impacts national results and how different assumptions in national pathways impact global results. This modeling setup acknowledges the broad heterogeneity of socio-ecological contexts and the fact that people who live in these different contexts should be empowered to design the future they want. But it also demonstrates to local decision-makers the interconnectedness of our food and land use system and the urgent need for more collaboration to converge local and global priorities

Efficacy of thiolepta in diabetic polyneuropathy: Results of the study ETIKA

Thiolepta (alpha-lipoic acid preparation) was used in treatment of 205 patients, 134 women and 71 men, mean age 59.3±10.1 years; 196 patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) type II and 9 patients with DM type I. Treatment duration was 4 weeks. Dosage of the drug was 600 mg daily. Patients were assessed neurologically and with psychometric scales. Special attention was drawn to the severity of positive and negative symptoms of neuropathy and sleep disorders. The results demonstrated the efficacy of thiolepta in diabetic polyneuropathy assessed by all parameters. The effect remained during 3 months after the end of treatment. Good tolerability and safety of the drug are highlighted

Efficacy of thiolepta in diabetic polyneuropathy: Results of the study ETIKA

Thiolepta (alpha-lipoic acid preparation) was used in treatment of 205 patients, 134 women and 71 men, mean age 59.3±10.1 years; 196 patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) type II and 9 patients with DM type I. Treatment duration was 4 weeks. Dosage of the drug was 600 mg daily. Patients were assessed neurologically and with psychometric scales. Special attention was drawn to the severity of positive and negative symptoms of neuropathy and sleep disorders. The results demonstrated the efficacy of thiolepta in diabetic polyneuropathy assessed by all parameters. The effect remained during 3 months after the end of treatment. Good tolerability and safety of the drug are highlighted