Large-scale land acquisition, or procurement of rural land by public and private investors, has become common in places like Africa, often to the detriment of local communities.

Securing land for growing food sounds like a pretty good idea, considering a lot of the prevailing research leads scientists to believe that we need to double our food production by 2050 to feed our growing human population. However, there are some significant concerns over these new large-scale land acquisitions. About two-thirds of the recent large-scale land acquisitions are located in Africa and the tendency of these deals is to mainly benefit the often-foreign investors, as opposed to local communities. They can displace small farmers, threaten local ecological integrity, and even reduce local food production. Countries such as China, India, and Qatar are acquiring land for future production of food (often for their own populations) and private companies are acquiring land for commodity crops such as soy and palm oil.

Currently, very little actual governmental oversight exists that’s dedicated to monitoring land acquisitions and ensuring that the agreements are transparent.

These issues were discussed as part on the ISGP’s Food Safety, Security, and Defense conference series, and this particular program was focused on Food and the Environment. The conference took place in October of 2014 at Cornell University. The policy position paper that was at the heart of the conference debates on this topic was written by Dr. Wendy Wolford, the Robert A. and Ruth E. Polson Professor of Development Sociology and the Faculty Director of Economic Development in the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future at Cornell, and was titled “Competing for Land: Future Trajectories for Rural Development.”

For more podcasts, visit ISGP’s The Forum and please consider sharing this special episode.

Did you know that climate change could cause decreases in labor productivity and increases in violent crime? How are climate-related economic losses related to the U.S. military?

Given current trends, heat levels during some parts of the year could get so bad that the human body won’t be able to maintain a normal core temperature without air conditioning. Think of the situation in places like the Middle East, territories highly frequented by the U.S. military, which also happen to have some of the hottest climates around - and will be getting hotter.

A lot of people are talking about climate change and risks, but the bigger question is how to act on those risks. A better understanding of how domestic and foreign economies will react to climate risks is crucial. This would go as far as to determine how commodity production and export would be affected...everything from agricultural products to oil.

These topics were part of a discussion of a position paper written by Kate Gordon from the Paulson Institute, and it was titled Climate Risks, the Economy, and National Security. The paper was presented at the Climate Impact on National Security conference held in partnership with the U.S. Army War College in late 2016.

Ms. Gordon mentioned a few groups that have been working to provide the best projections and risk factors to different sectors and regions here in the U.S. and abroad. These include the Risky Business Project and the Climate Impact Laboratory.

Also listen to other podcasts about climate change: Episode 56, titled Climatic and Episode 50, Tinker Tailor Climate Spy. For more podcasts, visit ISGP’s The Forum and please consider sharing this special episode.

Public perception of food safety risk is highly influenced by social media. In a world of infinite information sources, who can you trust when it comes to safely feeding your family?

When considering risk in food safety and security, the public frequently adopts different views depending on whether the risk is posed to the individual or the nation. Therefore it may be necessary to adopt food safety strategies that balance the needs of a nation with the desires of the individual. individuals want to be provided with the safest and least-processed products, two qualifiers that may not be achievable simultaneously because food technologies that enhance safety often require processing. The current method of involving the public in establishing policies and laws, including food safety laws, is ineffective and hinders transparency, creating distrust among consumers. Social media provides a platform for both accurate and inaccurate information to be communicated to the public, and it becomes the reader’s responsibility to identify the valuable material. The dissemination of incorrect food-related information by untrustworthy sources is a serious concern. How to sort the good information from the bad?

These issues and potential solutions were part of the discussion with Robert Buchanan, Director and Professor at the Center for Food Safety and Security Systems at the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Maryland. His paper, Risk Perception: A Challenge to the Development of Risk-Based Food Safety Policy, at the center of the debate at the Institute on Science for Global Policy’s (ISGP) conference on Food Safety, Security, and Defense: Safeguarding the American Food Supply that was convened at Ursinus College in 2015.

For more podcasts, visit ISGP’s The Forum and please consider sharing this episode.

Synthetic biology has the potential to change live — it already does in some cases — in the world of infectious disease, food security, etc. But it’s also one of the most dangerous scientific advancements out there, considering how it could be manipulated for nefarious purposes almost as easily, in a practical sense, as it can be used for good.

In the second installment of our two-episode deep-dive into synthetic biology, the co-hosts unwrap the biodefense concerns associated with "synbio" and discuss options for voluntary self-governance at the industry level.

Synthetic biology, the ability to manipulate the genomes of different organisms, can be, in a way, weaponized. And that’s why we need to be concerned about effectively regulating its use, but without stifling research and innovation.

The potential solutions and pitfalls were discussed during the debate of a policy position paper written by Dr. Amy Smithson of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. The paper, “Renovating Governance Strategies for Synthetic Biology and other Dual-Use Technologies,” was presented at the 2012 ISGP conference 21st Century Borders/Synthetic Biology: Focus on Responsibility and Governance conference in Tucson, Arizona.

For more podcasts, visit ISGP’s The Forum and please consider sharing this episode.

In the first installment in a two-part miniseries on applying synthetic biology to the real world scientists and policy makers must balance the overwhelming opportunities with the intricate challenges of this exciting technology. Synthetic biology and traditional molecular biology vary quite significantly in terms of both scale and speed with which new material can be created. With the automated method, which are characteristic of syn bio applications, it is easier and exponentially faster to make multiple variants of genes. Suddenly the potential exists for a significant positive impact across not only the field of infectious disease, but also across a variety of scientific disciplines and industries. However, because of the potential risk of bioterrorism and pathogen misuse that synthetic biology presents, debaters repeatedly noted that there’s an urgent need for an international regulatory framework to oversee this technology.

These issues were raised by a position paper titled titled “Synthetic Biology: A New Weapon in Our War Against Infectious Diseases,” written by Dr. John Glass, a professor at the J Craig Venter Institute. That paper and subsequent debate were part of an Institute on Science for Global Policy conference, Emerging and Persistent Infectious Diseases: Focus on Mitigation, which took place in October 2011 in Edinburgh, Scotland.

For more podcasts, visit ISGP’s The Forum and please consider sharing this episode.

While advances in food production have progressed, nearly 1 billion people are still hungry, and about 2 billion more lack sufficient nutrients in their diets. while most people perceive food insecurity to mean starvation and hunger, the definition actually extends in the other direction, as well. One of the fastest growing and critical threats to food security is actually obesity.

Current methods of producing, processing, packaging, transporting, retailing, and consuming food are contributing to natural resource degradation and there is an urgent need to improve food systems to enhance food security and health outcomes, improve efficiency, and reduce environmental impacts.

Strategies to improve food, nutritional, and environmental security part of the discussion of a policy position paper written by Dr. John Ingram, the Food Systems Programme Leader at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxfordscrutinized. His paper, Food Systems and Environmental Change: Navigating the Two-Way Street, was part of an Institute on Science for Global Policy conference, Food Safety, Security, and Defense: Focus on Food and the Environment convened at Cornell University in 2014.

For more podcasts, visit ISGP’s The Forum and please consider sharing this episode.

The "building blocks" of synthetic biology can create new antimicrobials while switching the process of antibiotic discovery from industry-level to academia. Could synbio be the key to overcoming antibiotic resistance? Antibiotic resistance is not only a major international issue in and of itself, but pharmaceutical companies have also reduced efforts in finding new varieties. Scientists can use synthetic biology principles as tools to construct or alter the genetic blueprint of, say, a microorganism so that it can produce useful substances, such as insulin or antibiotics. The genes that make up a beneficial-substance-producing organism. Scientists could, for instance, build their own antibiotic-producing bacteria by selecting the appropriate gene.

These issues were presented by in a paper written by Eriko Takano and Rainer Breitling, titled Antimicrobial Resistance - A New Drug Discovery Perspective using Synthetic Biology. The issues were presented by Dr. Takano and discussed in the ISGP conference Emerging and Persistent Infectious Diseases: Focus on Antimicrobial Resistance in Houston, Texas, in 2013. Drs. Takano and Breitling are both , professors from the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, and their position paper from this conference was titled Antimicrobial Resistance - A New Drug Discovery Perspective using Synthetic Biology.

For more podcasts, visit ISGP’s The Forum and please consider sharing this episode.

Do you have questions about climate change? The Forum's crash course in Climate 101 breaks down the scientific evidence and examines possible outcomes. The discussion centers on the evidence in support of the fact that the earth’s climate is changing, how and why we see seasonal and regional variations in climate systems, and why, importantly, this does not mean that the climate changes we’re witnessing are just another ebb and flow of a natural cycle.

The discussion is based on the policy paper, Climate Change Evidence, written by Professor Inez Fung for the 2016 ISGP conference called Climate Impact on National Security (CINS), which was held at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania. Professor Inez Fung was the lead writer from the U.S. on a publication called Climate Change: Evidence and Causes, which was released jointly in 2014 by the National Academy of Sciences and The Royal Society. Professor Fung is a Professor of Atmospheric Science at Berkeley.

For more podcasts, visit ISGP’s The Forum and please consider sharing this episode.

When it comes to animal-borne diseases, emerging and recurring varieties elicit wildly different levels of public concern (Spoiler alert: people in the developed world are generally more concerned about emerging diseases). This dramatically influences health outcomes, especially in less affluent regions.

A small fraction of the public’s attention is given to endemic zoonoses linked to poverty in developing countries. To make matters worse, rapid urbanization in these areas introduces additional factors that increase the risk of zoonoses, such as lack of sanitation and increased exposure to livestock. For example, due to the rapidly growing demand for meat to feed an even more rapidly growing population, farmers in some countries need to cross-breed wild cattle to increase meat or dairy production. And those wild cattle can house some pretty nasty germs, which cattle farmers haven’t been exposed to historically.

These issues are part of a policy position paper titled “One Health Plus: Integrated Control and Elimination of Zoonoses” from the ISGP’s conference on Emerging and Persistent Infectious Disease: Focus on Societal and Economic Context. The program was convened by the Institute on Science for Global Policy in partnership with George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, in 2012. The paper was authored by Dr. Jakob Zinsstag, Deputy Head of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and University of Basel in Basel, Switzerland.

For more podcasts, visit ISGP’s The Forum and please consider sharing this episode. Agricultural biotechnology has been suggested to provide a helping hand when it comes to feeding a growing population and combating malnutrition. But did you know it could do so while protecting biodiversity and ensuring sustainable food production?

New and innovative biotechnologies that could improve the operational efficiency of the global agriculture sector was discussed in relation to Dr. Martina Newell-McGloughlin’s paper, “Agricultural Biotechnology’s Potential Contribution to Global Food Security and Stewardship of the Earth’s Resources.” These biotechnologies include insect resistance, increased nutritional value in foods, crop resistance to insects, blights and disease, improved output, and The debate was part of the Institute on Science for Global Policy’s conference, Food Safety, Security, and Defense: Focus on Technologies and Innovation, in Verona, Italy, back in April 2013.

For more podcasts, visit ISGP’s The Forum and please consider sharing this episode.