Producing enough food for a rapidly growing population, and taking care of our planet are two of the world's biggest challenges.
Research initiatives/academic groups
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The DRFN provides research-based advice and training aimed at sustainable development policymakers in southern Africa. The organisation's areas of focus include managing rangelands and livestock, water, energy efficiency and combating land degradation and desertification. The DRFN also helps raise public awareness of deserts and desertification.
Africa Harvest — founded by Kenyan scientist Florence Wambugu — supports policy development and scientific and institutional capacity building across East Africa and promotes the use of modern biotechnologies to help the region's farmers. The foundation's flagship project uses tissue culture technology to reproduce disease-free banana plants for distribution across East Africa.
It also runs a communication and advocacy programme to promote public acceptance of biotechnologies — especially genetic modification. The organisation publishes information about its tree-planting programme in Kenya and links to other African and international organisations working in biotechnology.
AMMANET promotes using genetic marker-assisted selection (MAS) technologies to accelerate African plant breeding efforts and deliver food security and economic growth. Over 100 African scientists established the network in 2003, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation.
The network brings regional and international agricultural researchers together, publishing information about its activities and providing contact information of all its members. It also links to news, scientific articles and other useful resources on MAS.
CABS was founded in 1998 and is a part of the US non-governmental organisation Conservation International. It brings together leading experts in science and technology, and conducts research that supports the mission of its parent organisation, namely to identify and respond to elements that threaten the earth's biological diversity. CABS recently launched its Tropical Ecology, Assessment and Monitoring (TEAM) initiative, which aims to monitor long-term trends in biodiversity through a growing network of tropical field stations.
The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research is an association of public and private members supporting a system of 16 Future Harvest centres that work in more than 100 countries to mobilise cutting-edge science to reduce hunger and poverty, improve human nutrition and health, and protect the environment. As well as taking a keen interest in agricultural biotechnology, much of CGIAR's research has direct relevance to biodiversity. CGIAR also coordinates a global network of genebanks that aims to keep the bulk of the world's plant genetic resources in the public domain.
The Desert Research Institute is based in Nevada in the United States. Its principal research areas include atmosphere, water and land management – in the United States and in the developing world. The institute is engaged in a project to bring clean water and sanitation to communities in Ghana, Mali and Niger through the West Africa Water Initiative (WAWI). WAWI aims to do this before 2008.
Diversitas is an international network of the world’s leading biodiversity scientists. It has headquarters in Paris and is sponsored by five partner organisations including UNESCO and the International Council for Science. The Diversitas website is an accessible source of information on the major natural science questions that researchers are seeking to answer, which include: predicting changes to biodiversity; assessing the impacts of these changes; and developing sharper research tools. A quarterly
newsletter provides a good overview of progress on the main scientific themes in global biodiversity conservation, as well as updates from its member scientists.
The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center is an independent not-for-profit research institute which opened in 2001 as a parternship between the Missouri Botanical Garden, Monsanto, and various US universities. Part of the Danforth Center’s mission is to facilitate the development and transfer of technologies for developing countries and much of this work takes place in the International Laboratory for Tropical Agricultural Biotechnology (ILTAB) where rice, cassava and tomato currently form the core of research activities.
ENDA is an association of research groups based both in Senegal and other Southern countries, which work on development and environment themes. It collaborates with grassroots groups in search of alternative development models on the basis of the experience, expectations and objectives of marginalised peoples.
The Gobabeb Training and Research Centre aims to understand the relationship between the ecology of arid environments and human activities. Its areas of focus include developing appropriate technologies that can help improve quality of life, such as fog-collection and alternative energy sources. The centre is attached to the Southern Africa Development Community, the intergovernmental organisation representing countries in southern Africa. It is also associated with the Desert Research Foundation of Namibia.
The Institute of genomics and Integrative Biology is a constituent laboratory of India's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. It is engaged in various aspects of modern biotechnology with a special focus on functional genomics and genome informatics. Formerly the Centre for Biochemical Technology, the organiastion is evolving into an interdisciplinary institute comprising several networked laboratories.
The IAC was created in 2000 by the world's science academies to support informed decision making through sound scientific advice on issues ranging from genetically modified organisms to climate change. At the request of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the IAC organises
UN ambassador symposia to call attention to various issues and their potential impact on policy making.
This non-profit organisation aims to develop sustainable ecological farming in Africa and India. ICRISAT's mission is "to help empower 600 million poor people to overcome hunger, poverty and a degraded environment in the dry tropics through better agriculture".
ICRISAT's BioPower initiative aims to ensure that bioenergy research benefits the poor. Its activities include analysing bioenergy trends and understanding their repercussions for the poor, and enabling governments to formulate pro-bioenergy policies that benefit poor people.
The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) was founded in 1967 with a mandate for improving food production in the humid tropics and to develop sustainable production systems. It became the first African link in the worldwide network of agricultural research centres supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. IITA's research agenda addresses crop improvement, plant health, and resource and crop management within a food systems framework, targeted at the identified needs of four major agroecological zones: the dry savanna, the moist savanna, the humid forests, and the midaltitude savanna.
The Millennium Ecosystems Assessement is an international science-based initiative to document the state of the world’s ecosystems and how they are affected by human activities. The Assessment’s reports are due to be published over two years beginning in September 2003. Main donors include the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility, the UN Foundation, the Packard Foundation and the UN Environment Programme.
PlantBio is a grant-making initiative from the South African Department of Science and Technology. It aims to develop a strong and sustainable plant biotechnology sector in South Africa by promoting new products and services, incubating commercial programmes and new businesses, building scientific capacity and developing human resources.
PlantBio prioritises technologies aimed at alleviating poverty and improving food security — for example, biofertilisers, plant breeding, tissue culture and genetic modification. The organisation encourages collaborating institutes to build national capacities and consolidate costs.
It publishes information on how to apply for funding and hosts a useful page of links to South African biotech investors, business incubators, funding agencies and service providers.
This website on Indigenous Knowledge is maintained by NUFFIC. It offers announcements related to IK, a database of online resources, a monthly newsletter (Indigenous Knowledge WorldWide), and several best practice guides. An archive of the Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor (published from 1993) is also available online.
Based at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, PTRR aims to extend to indigenous peoples and local communities "knowledge of appropriate mechanisms for protecting the integrity of their knowledge and resources".
Indigenous Knowledge Systems is a special focus of the National Research Foundation (NRF) in South Africa. The NRF aims to: develop theoretical and methodological paradigms within which to understand the specific characteristics of IK; shed light on the role of IK in nation-building; develop research capacity in the field of IK in South Africa.
The AATF is a not-for-profit foundation established in 2003 supporting public-private partnerships to increase smallholder farmers' access to appropriate technologies in sub-Saharan Africa. It publishes news and information about ongoing projects and hosts a monthly open forum bringing together scientists, journalists and policymakers to discuss how science and technology can improve African agriculture.
