International Women’s Day 2014: Women in agriculture
by Rachel Hill with contributions from Abigail Rumsey, Claire Curry, Emily Palmer and Léna Durocher-Granger. For over a century countries globally have celebrated International Women’s Day as a day to reflect on the role of women in society. In honor of International Women’s Day 2014 we are giving a special focus to women in agriculture.…
BBC launches Woman’s Hour Power List 2014: highlights FGM in time for International Woman’s Day
BBC Radio 4 launched the Woman’s Hour Power List 2014 to identify the top 10 female ‘game changers’; changing the rules in culture, society and business in the United Kingdom today. Woman’s Hour Power List 2013 had 100 names, average age over 50, and many well-known. This year’s judges want the 2014 list to be younger and have unexpected names! Fahma Mohamed, the teenage female genital mutilation (FGM) campaigner was suggested as an ideal candidate: supported by the Guardian newspaper, she recently ran a petition to lobby the government to address FGM in the UK.
How mobile phones could make a difference to maternal health
Mobile technology is revolutionising health and health care in developing countries enabling health promotion campaigns, reminders about therapy and data collecting. To women it could provide a lifeline for them during pregnancy and birth. But what evidence is there that mobile messages are accessible to women in these situations and that they could change women’s…
World NGO Day – 27 February
February 27th 2014 was World NGO Day. It was marked by an international conference held in Helsinki, Finland, across the 27th-28th February entitled ‘Your NGO day: a generation of new NGOs’. The conference agenda reflected some of the roles and values of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with speakers covering health, education, social welfare and the empowerment…
Illegal wildlife trade – Focus of first ever World Wildlife Day
At the sixteenth meeting of the Conference of Parties to CITES in March 2013, the Thai Government recommended the adoption of a resolution to declare March 3 as World Wildlife Day, which was later agreed at the United Nations General Assembly in December. The date marks the anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on…
2014: the International Year of Family Farming
Did you know that there are 1.5 billion people worldwide who are estimated to be involved in family farming? The United Nations has declared 2014 as the International Year of Family Farming (IYFF) to recognize the importance of family farming in reducing poverty and improving global food security. So what is family farming?
IPPC and Plantwise lead successful workshop for coordinated plant protection in East Africa
From Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, key representatives of agricultural institutions gathered in Nairobi last week for the first ever joint workshop led by CABI’s Plantwise programme and the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) Secretariat. The workshop was convened in an effort to exchange national experiences in plant protection and pave the way for renewed…
CEO Trevor Nicholls live at The Economist’s Feeding the World 2014
Bringing together key players in food security from the private, public and civil society sector, the Economist’s annual Feeding the World conference yesterday in London also highlighted CABI’s efforts to level the playing field for the smallholder farmer. Invited to speak on the afternoon panel focused on trade and supply chain resources, CABI’s CEO Dr…
Water water everywhere…but is climate change to blame?
It is perhaps not surprising that the latest statistics from the Met Office in the UK show that this winter has been one of the most exceptional periods of rainfall in England and Wales in at least 248 years, thanks to a sequence of low pressure weather systems making their way across the Atlantic. As…
UK boating contributes £3.7 billion to economy
Image: VisitBritain, Boats at Christchurch Boating tourism contributed an estimated £3.7 billion to the UK economy in 2012/13, according to the new comprehensive report published by the British Marine Federation. This figure accounts for 3.2% of all tourism expenditure in the UK, and supports approximately 96,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs through direct and indirect effects.…