On Tuesday I was at Portcullis House as the Labour party outlined its new vision for post-2015 development. The event was titled ‘Tackling inequality and promoting sustainable development’. These were indeed the main overriding themes, but this is not the place to examine Labour’s actual vision.

But of particular interest to me were the references to the sustainable intensification of agriculture, which appeared throughout. This is a term which descends directly from our Reaping the Benefits report, and also a subject of our successful and lively Policy Lab meeting last week.

Mary Creagh MP was on the post-2015 ‘panel’ representing the shadow view of Defra’s development policies. Martin Nesbit represented Defra at our PolicyLab event, and reassuringly, the themes were similar. Mary encouraged a stark look at our own food supply chains with reference to the horsemeat scandal. “We are a bit blasé about food in the developed world, we trust, almost without question, that we have food systems to deliver us the nutrition that we want and need, exactly when we want and need it, but this is not failsafe”

When we look at the broader picture of food supply in a global development context (a theme which was addressed in our People and the Planet report), we have an emerging food conundrum related to the emerging middle classes. As countries increase in wealth, their residents will want a nutrient high, meat rich diet (which as UK citizens we all have the opportunity to enjoy). Why shouldn’t others have this too?!

The problem is that meat production is wasteful and bad for the planet (huge generalisation). This is well known among policymakers, scientists and vegetarians. I had a very interesting discussion on this and laboratory produced meat with Dr Matt Reed, the Chair of our PolicyLab event, last Thursday. Can synthetic biology provide the answers through laboratory created meat? Surely this is the ultimate example of sustainable intensification – how science and technology can combine to feed the world?

Regardless of your opinion on synthetic biology, feeding grain which could be fed to humans, to animals, is indeed energetically wasteful, and this leads me onto Mary Creagh’s comment from yesterday’s event. She likened using crops for bio-fuel to feeding grain to cows. “Use waste products for bio-fuel and feed grass to cows instead! It is more sustainable and economically cheaper.”

If we assume that lab meat is not going to happen (or more crucially, be accepted for the mainstream market) anytime soon, and that the growing middle classes will still want a nutritious diet containing meat; inevitably the consumer demand for meat as a valued resource will increase above supply, and even with my amateur knowledge of economics, I’m guessing the price goes up?  Will this lead to food rationing to ensure fairness? Woe betides the politician who has to inform the British public that they may only be able to eat meat three days a week.  I imagine most people in the UK would not look upon this suggestion favourably!

With regards to sustainable intensification, Mary had another interesting point, which is strongly linked to the post-2015 development agenda (and justifies a strong, cross-cutting, and joined up approach to the new goals). She suggests that the real key is in supporting subsistence farming in developing countries, and crucially, the role of women. Road networks are also vital. By allowing isolated farmers access to new technologies and education, sustainable intensification can be achieved in all corners of the earth. And not only that. If women are able to grow excess crops to sell, they are therefore able to save for the future, they can educate their children, and thus improve the lives of future generations.

There you go. Emancipation of women – sustainable intensification – education- economic growth, sustainable development, all in one.

The post-2015 development goals have many cross-cutting themes, which will incorporate a large number of Royal Society interests. But what role can science play in informing this policy? Our next PolicyLab event on 6 June will aim to address this.

Our People and the Planet report published in April 2012 covers the issues of population and consumption in detail; And our Reaping the Benefits report, published in October 2009, explores the sustainable intensification of global agriculture. Synthetic biology is one of our ongoing research themes.

As I realised I was the only woman on board an aeroplane full of Chelsea fans, travelling to the Shell Powering Progress Together Conference, this year focusing on the concept of resilience, this was a question at the front of my mind.

I was glad I survived the flight because the conference had some provoking speakers from academia, NGOs and the private sector.  Things kicked off with an explanation of the complex concept of resilience – the ability to cope with shocks and still keep functioning in much the same way – from Brian Walker of the Resilience Alliance.  Johan Rockström (Stockholm Resilience Institute) emphasised our desperate need to build resilience in light of planetary changes that are resulting from the 7 billion of us living here (he cited the fact that humans now move more rock and sediment on Earth than the natural processes of weathering and erosion as an example).

So what is the answer?  How can we increase our resilience?

Well, unfortunately there isn’t a silver bullet but it sounds as though the vital ingredients are:

• Passionate leadership (Shell CEO Peter Voser made clear that this has to come from senior business leaders like himself, particularly given the current political vacuum in the EU on this topic);
• New institutions and collaborating with others out of our ‘comfort zones’;
• Embracing diversity – social, economic and ecological; and
• Innovating and using technology – I particularly liked the contrasting images of papal inaugurations in 2005 and 2013 which Daan Roosegaarde used to show how technology can change us in a very short period. Even the pope is now on twitter!

But the idea that had most resonance for me, if we are to encourage action despite the complexity of both the concept of resilience and the earth’s systems, was that of Julia Marton-Lefèvre, of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.  She talked of the need to tell positive stories, and in particular, how we can work with nature to build our resilience (see the IUCN’s Bonn Challenge as an example).

And this is something The Royal Society is turning its attention to in our next project – looking at how ecosystems can be used to build human resilience to climate change.  Reading the 2008 winner of The Royal Society Prize for Science Books, Mark Lynas’s Six Degrees, is making me realise we’re going to need all the help we can get;  and making me more nervous than a lone women on a plane of Chelsea fans.

Last week the Royal Society held a PolicyLab meeting titled ‘Sustainable Intensification: the future of farming in Europe?’. In this blog post, our chair, Dr Matt Reed, from the Countryside and Community Research Institute offers his thoughts on the event, his experience as chair, and provides an overview of some of the emergent themes.

“It didn’t start well, I got lost.  I generally work in places where the grass grows in the middle of the road, which is physically and metaphorically a long distance from the Royal Society’s HQ – there is always a moment of ‘city environment’ re-orientation.  Fortunately it went very well from then on, all of the speakers kept well to time, so that we could launch into the Q&A, which comprised of focused and well humoured questions.  It seemed that all was going very well, and we all agreed! Or rather we all seemed to be agreeing…

• Yes, there was a need to look at the productive capacity of global agriculture (tick),
• Yes, the market needed to play a bigger role in the future of agriculture (tick)
• Yes, we need to listen to farmers more (tick)
• Yes, the CAP is unwieldy (tick) and in need of reform (tick),
• Yes, we should use all possible, appropriate, technologies (tick).

That was all agreed, a good evening’s work, off to the drinks reception. Not quite.

Here it comes – look harder at what people said – it wasn’t that straightforward.  If you look at the definitions of sustainable intensification carefully in the video, there is some variation, small but significant.  When speakers mentioned the ‘market’, that word clearly meant different things to different people. One view was quite different from being more attentive to the needs of a farm business – which are ultimately shaped by the needs of the family that owns the farm or discussions of food sovereignty, but looked to a liberalization of the market. Land being ‘released’ to free up the development of the market is the opposite to using policy to secure family farmers.

Then there is the argument that some farmers have responded to the challenge of SI already boosting production and protecting the environment, so do they really need new genetic technology? Genomics has sucked up considerable sums of public money and the effective application of this knowledge as technology remains somewhere on the horizon, whilst the private implementation of these technologies have rendered the food system in two.  We could all agree that food waste is irrational, except when the mask slipped and I had to make the argument that food waste is functional for the food industry. How could they manage if they sold a third less?  If we think about food waste (over purchasing) in tandem with obesity (over eating) the food business is about selling food, not the rational and equitable distribution of it.

If we teased more at the areas of agreement then I think it would be apparent that we agreed less on the detail and a lot more on over the overarching questions. Why? Well, both ‘sustainable’ and ‘intensification’ are fairly vague words before they are strung together, with much room for interpretation.  They act as a banner to signal that questions of food production are important, questions of environmental damage, co-production and restitution are important, that food has the power of conviviality and divisiveness, often simultaneously realised, and so should be handled with care by policy makers.

Therefore the panel could agree on the starting point, but if you watch the video you can also see that by probing at the details, often it is only the starting point that the speakers agreed upon. Where we are going, why, who is in charge and who should be in charge are controversies we’ll have to contest and debate another day.”

The video from the Sustainable Intensification event, complete with full speaker presentations and slides is available now on our PolicyLab meeting page.

Guest blog contribution from Professor Janet Dwyer, Countryside and Community Research Institute, University of Gloucestershire.

Janet Dwyer is a Professor of Rural Policy and co-director of the Countryside and Community Research Institute at the University of Gloucestershire. She works on both European and UK agricultural policies and practices, and has a particular interest in integrated approaches, environmental sustainability, the Common Agricultural Policy reform and institutional adaptation.

With such a wealth of expertise, Janet has kindly agreed to speak on the panel of our PolicyLab event ‘Sustainable Intensification: the future of farming in Europe?’ event tomorrow evening. As a prequel to this, here are her thoughts on some of the major themes…

What is sustainable intensification?

“In my view, ‘sustainable intensification’ is the global-level challenge which arises because of anticipated growth in demand for food over the next 50 years combined with pressures from climate change and the need to provide more of our future energy from renewable sources: all of these things increase the need to produce more, in an environmentally-sustainable way, globally. But in the EU and especially the UK, where our levels of output are already comparatively high, the need is more for greater efficiency in how we produce food and fuels: reducing waste and over-use of inputs and simultaneously providing for the use of rural land for other purposes (notably ecosystem services and climate change mitigation). The ecological capacity to safely and sustainably increase food output per hectare is much higher in some other parts of the world than in the UK: if we were to push to increase farm output here, we would most likely do this by taking more resources from other parts of the world (in the form of increased agro-chemicals, fuel and feed), in an ultimately unjust and unsustainable manner.”

How does it affect environmental services and biodiversity?

“The principle is that it should not negatively affect these and indeed should promote positive effects wherever possible. If it fails to do so, it cannot be termed sustainable.”

Is it economically viable?

“The answer to this depends entirely upon how it is implemented but I have seen sufficient examples in practice to trust that it could be both economically viable as a strategy for the farm sector and rural land more generally, and also attractive to rural entrepreneurs and innovators as a business inspiration.”

Will it work in the UK?

“It will require better links between cutting edge environmental and applied social science and policy research, and farming and food and energy supply chain practice, across the country, to translate the concept into improved practice in a range of situations. If this can be achieved then it could ‘work’ as a guiding principle for UK farming and food production, looking ahead.”

Can sustainable intensification and the Common Agricultural Policy co-exist?

“Of course they can. One is a set of principles about supporting farming and farmers through a variety of mechanisms and the other is a goal which might be promoted through appropriate design and delivery of CAP elements – most notably Pillar 2 policies for knowledge exchange, advice, demonstration, co-operation and innovation, as well as local strategic planning and environmental management. Even pillar 1 farm income support should not be in conflict with sustainable intensification as I define it – if it retains farming in situations where it would otherwise not be viable, the CAP is supporting sustainable intensification at the extensive margin. If it ‘greens’ the practices of the most intensive and productive farms in Europe, it is contributing to sustainable intensification by slightly improving the balance of their environmental impacts and it is highly unlikely to affect sector output levels, overall.”

There will be another guest blog post to follow next week as a sequel and summary of the sustainable intensification PolicyLab event. The video from this event will be posted on our PolicyLab page.

Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) discussions have been hotting up to sizzling point this year, and with CAP reform due on 1 January 2014, it’s no wonder.

The Common Agricultural Policy (or the CAP, as it is more affectionately, or not, referred) is the EU’s single largest common policy, and accounts for over 40% of the entire EU budget. In one way or another the decisions that are made on 1 January 2014 will affect us all. So get listening.

The CAP as it currently stands comprises of two pillars. The first pillar finances direct subsidy payments to support farmers, and deals with market aspects. The second pillar is intended for ‘rural development measures’, including the provision of public goods. Just think of them as two separate piles of EU cash!

With these two distinct pillars in mind, it seems that recent discussion is leading to a blurring of the lines between these two separate funds. Suggestions from Europe are that funds may be transferred between the two pillars in some member states under the new reforms. This blurring is certain to make some farmers and environmentalists feel a little queasy. Essentially this is taking money away from environmental services and rural development and putting it straight back into direct subsidies, making the provision of these public goods clearly optional (!). The problem is that EU ministers are attempting to shoehorn some pretty big changes (that please everyone marginally, and no-one fully) into the existing two pillars, and unsurprisingly, finding that they don’t quite fit!

I shall explain. There are two sides to this. People feel safe within the old CAP, they like it, they understand it: and this was reflected in a report from the European Commission summarising results of a public debate on the subject, “A large number of correspondents argue for the current direction of the CAP to be maintained with relatively minor alterations”.

On the other hand, the European commission made it quite clear from the outset that the CAP needed significant reform to take into account ‘new Europe’ with its 27 member states (and with it huge diversity in wealth and agriculture) and the increasing need to reward farmers for good environmental stewardship (these initial noises were music to the ears of environmentalists). So on the one hand farmers want a relatively unchanged CAP and on the other hand environmentalists are excited at the prospect of incorporating environmental services into farming policy.  Sustainable intensification has become the adopted policy phrase uniting these two aspects (see previous blog post).

However it seems ridiculous that in the face of such reform, the two pillars remain steadfast, especially as all that they stand for is being gradually corroded away! Two pillars are fooling no-one. They are imaginary.

And someone is going to get their heart broken.

Keep your eyes on the blog for more on sustainable intensification and the CAP reform in the lead up to our PolicyLab event on 9 May.

Professor Sadie Creese, Co-Director of the Institute for the Future of Computing at the Oxford Martin School, started by emphasizing that the internet can be a force for good by increasing our ability to share and build relationships across the globe. The abundance of data and advances in information technology are seen by leaders as crucial to tackling diverse future challenges, but they also leave us vulnerable. We don’t have to look to the future to see that we have a responsibility and a vested interest in protecting privacy online. Today, it would be difficult for most of us to remove our online presence if we wanted to, and Creese noted that we have probably agreed to standards of privacy and security that we would not find acceptable offline. To design policies and legislation to protect data, we must first decide what we consider to be acceptable for security online.

The second speaker was Richard Thompson, Former Chief Constable of the Civil Nuclear Constabulary. He said that although espionage, fraud and information theft are not new, there are new challenges online. First, the majority of our ‘wealth’ now exists as data in an extremely complex digital world. Second, the barriers to entry for criminals are extremely low; hacking does not need to be funded by a state or an organised crime network to be effective. Third, for law enforcement, there is often no geographical link between the victim and the criminal and multi-jurisdictional investigations are fraught with difficulties, particularly where laws and resources differ. A market already exists on the darknet for commerical espionage and hacking tools, and the origins of such attacks are almost impossible to trace. However, it is not just criminals taking advantage of this; several countries admit to or have been caught (remember Stuxnet?) hacking too.

The final panellist was Peter Jopling, Business Unit Executive at IBM Security Solutions, who brought a more technical perspective to bear. He talked about IBM’s research in identifying vulnerabilities across networks. The volume of data here can aid the development of solutions, but the first challenge is analysing it to identify meaningful events. Jopling also mentioned the need to act in real time in the arms race between security experts and hackers, as attack vectors change quickly.

With all these issues brought to the table, the Chair kicked off the question session by asking whether we have to accept the erosion of privacy to remain secure online. To my relief, the answer seemed to be a resounding no, but there were no easy answers to how we might go about preserving it. It was agreed that we have a responsibility to protect ourselves—with well-chosen passwords or two-factor authentication—but these measures are not always sufficient. Although much of the discussion focussed on privacy, cyber security must also defend against malicious activities such as attacks on infrastructure by terrorist groups. One questioner asked what academic research has to offer here. Professor Creese said that in the field of cyber security, investment has been generous, but tends to be narrowly focussed and prescriptive, leaving no space for radical ideas. This battle for academic freedom might be a familiar story to some of our Fellows.

The event touched on a broad range of cyber security issues, and the speakers seemed to agree that addressing these threats requires the development of a policy and legal framework, in which international cooperation and discussion will be crucial. As shown by reactions to the publication of the Draft Communications Data Bill in the UK in 2012—which aimed to give the police and security services more power to monitor internet activity—policy in this area can be contentious. The difficult challenge for governments then, is to balance liberty and security in a changing landscape.

In March I was fortunate to attend the UK-Russia Frontiers of Science symposium – a great meeting for early career researchers. The Royal Society’s Foreign Secretary, Martyn Poliakoff, took the opportunity while in Kazan to visit the Museum of Chemistry. He was there owing to his personal interest as a chemist, and to try and get some additional material for his youtube series Periodic Videos.

I took the opportunity to tag along and came face to face with “my” element – Number 44, Ruthenium. I certainly can’t claim it was named after me (nor happily that I was named after it) but it was still good to see it. The locals seemed to be amused (Ruth is not a common name in Russia);  so here is thepicture for posterity of me posing with “my” element.

The Royal Society has enjoyed strong links with Russia since its earliest days in the seventeenth century.  Earlier this month saw the continuation of this long tradition, with the visit of a high level Russian delegation which aimed to bring together science, engineering and research funders, along with academies and other stakeholders, to forge closer links and to promote mutual understanding of each other’s organisations, research landscapes and priorities. See Building scientific links with Russia.

The case has been made before, and yes, there have been good indications of the Government’s commitment to investing in research as part of their strategies for economic growth.

But these are pressing times, and it’s not obvious that research investment will be seen as a priority come the next spending review on 26 June. In conversation with Business Secretary Vince Cable on the Today programme*, Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society, said we can not take the UK’s position as a world leader in science for granted.

It is true the UK has men and women performing world class research in the UK, but in terms of investment, we are near-bottom of the G8 league. Unless we are able to reverse the flat-cash science budget (a downward trend when adjusting for inflation), we will be competing over extra time a player down.

If ‘Renaissance man’ John Browne is right, and research is part of the foundations for economic growth we will need sustained research investment to keep the pipeline of talent and ideas flowing, moving us up the Premier league.

*1hr 34min 20secs in.

Here’s a picture of our very own Caroline Dynes, Policy Adviser at the Royal Society, spreading the word around Whitehall this morning…

The Royal Society has enjoyed strong links with Russia since its earliest days in the seventeenth century, when Peter the Great visited and struck up a particularly cordial relationship with Edmond Halley, taking his advice on the Russian navy, among other things. These links continued throughout the 20^th century despite wider Cold War tensions, with the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, visiting the Society and a Society delegation travelling to Moscow over 50 years ago. This March saw thirty of the UK’s most promising early career scientists head to Kazan in the Republic of Tatarstan, 2 hours by plane from Moscow, for a Frontiers of Science Meeting jointly held with the Russian Academy of Sciences, which involved meeting thirty of their Russian counterparts to discuss eight research areas over four days.

Last week saw the continuation of this long tradition, with the visit of a high level Russian delegation, led by Professor Vladislav Panchenko, Chair of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR), along with representatives from the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Education and Science, for a UK-Russia roundtable on research and policy.

Organised and hosted jointly between the Society’s Prof Martyn Poliakoff FRS, Foreign Secretary and Dr Julia Knights, Head of the Science & Innovation Network (SIN) – Russia of the British Embassy in Moscow, the aim of the meeting was to bring together science, engineering and research funders, along with academies and other stakeholders, to forge closer links and to promote mutual understanding of each other’s organisations, research landscapes and priorities. It was then followed by a short programme of visits to some key UK research organisations and government departments.

A key aim of the meeting was to discuss shared research priorities for a bilateral statement under the UK-Russia Joint Commission on Science and Innovation to take place in October at the Royal Society – a high level ministerial meeting between UK science minister David Willetts and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Livanov, to review existing collaborations and to discuss future activities. A number of areas of mutual interest were agreed upon including Arctic and polar research, space research, large research facilities and accelerator science. The roundtable also led to several new science missions being agreed in both directions in 2013/14. This week’s programme, and the history of scientific links between our countries, only serves to highlight the importance of science in diplomacy, long a significant area of interest to the Society and to the Science & Innovation Network (SIN) – Russia, in fostering international scientific collaboration, and strengthening relations more broadly. This latter aim has already been boosted by the recent announcement of the UK/Russia Year of Culture in 2014.

The Society and SIN-Russia are now busy preparing for the upcoming UK Russia Joint Commission, and encourage any UK research stakeholders that have an interest to participate to get in touch.

For as long as I’ve been involved in nature conservation, it’s been unmistakably interdisciplinary. During my studies for a MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management, the conservation community was busy forging relationships with development (see ICDPs), economics (see REDD), anthropology (see CBNRM), and even religion (see ARC). Fast forward a few years and some unfamiliar partners are on the scene. A new breed of conservation is emerging…

Last autumn I found myself in Hyderabad, India at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s biennial jamboree. While the familiar facets of biodiversity conservation remained high on the agenda, my focus was on two new potential game changers: synthetic biology and geoengineering.

The former involves the design and construction of novel biological parts, devices and systems. While the latter entails the deliberate, large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system in order to combat global warming. Two distinct concepts, I’ll grant you that; and both at different stages of development. Yet when viewed through the lens of conservation, synthetic biology and geoengineering have more in common than first meets the eye:

• Both could be helpful or harmful for biodiversity.
• Both represent a ‘technofix’ or ‘sticking plaster’ – they fail to deal with the root causes of our environmental woes.
• Both raise a moral hazard – will over-reliance on technology lead to under-ambition in mitigating climate change and saving species?
• Both raise ‘who’ questions – who will develop the technologies, and who will govern them?  This is particularly pertinent to conservation, given its commitment to access and benefit sharing.
• Both are new to conservation, and not yet normalised.

In the case of synthetic biology, this final point was writ large at last week’s Wildlife Conservation Society conference (see my previous post). Although the gathering sought to foster collaboration between synthetic biology and conservation (and was largely successful in doing so), the tone at times teetered on the verge of ‘us and them’. At one point, Imperial’s Dick Kitney complained that the dialogue resembled sensible adult conservationists chiding unruly teenage synthetic biologists. Ed Gillespie of Futerra summed up the occasion nicely: was it the start of a long and fruitful relationship, or just another one-night stand?

For clues on how modern conservation might embrace or eject its new bedfellows, I’ll be following the Cambridge Conservation Initiative’s review of the potential impacts of geoengineering on ecosystems and biodiversity. I’ll also be attending Foresight Action Network’s event on the future environmental applications and implications of synthetic biology. Join me by sharing your vision for the future of conservation below.

The Royal Society has published two reports on geoengineering: ‘Geoengineering the climate: science, governance and uncertainty’ (2009) and ‘Solar radiation management: the governance of research’ (2011). For details of our synthetic biology work, check out our project pages.