Celebrities help make causes known to larger audiences and can be effective in obtaining pledges from policymakers. Yet their simplified advocacy messages can lead to ineffective or harmful policies.
The film Pride, which won the Queer Palm Award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, is based on the true story of what seems to be a rare occurrence in human history: two oppressed groups (in this case…
Most have heard of the Battle of Waterloo, but who has heard of the volcano called Tambora? No school textbook I’ve seen mentions that only two months before Napoleon’s final defeat in Belgium on June…
If your great-grandparents lived through a famine, their experience could well have altered their genetic code. And three generations later you could well be showing signs of that change. The idea that…
Our modern food system is a double-edged sword: delivering chronic under-nutrition due to shortages of nutritious food, and chronic obesity due to overconsumption. In Australia, we’re living among 60…
CHOGM: As the leaders of Commonwealth nations meet in Perth, The Conversation is examining the role of the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) Meeting. Daniel Rodriguez from the University…
We need to stop thinking about food security as an economic problem. Food security is largely discussed in terms of increasing demand pressures and worsening constraints on supply. These discussions miss…
While droughts are caused by weather – the failure of the rains – famines are invariably political. The current famine in southern Somalia should have come as no surprise. Aid agencies have been warning…
With the UN declaring famine in Somalia for the first time since 1992, and other countries in the Horn of Africa suffering critical food shortages, this already unstable region is facing devastation. Drought-stricken…
Senior Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI); Research Fellow, World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), United Nations University