China and Globalization in a Changing Context

The present article focuses on the growing emphasis on international dimensions of the curriculum in the UK. Educators and policymakers increasingly grapple with the thorny issue of how best to prepare future generations for life in a world changing so rapidly that no‐one is able to predict precisely what knowledge and skills will be relevant for the adult of tomorrow. Overlapping with debate relating to the national context is that pertaining to the global environment, which manifests itself in current educational discourse relating to a growing number of concepts such as global citizenship education, international education, development education, world studies, and education for international understanding. Beginning with consideration of the curriculum context, this article highlights the growing number of international curriculum programmes being developed and offered worldwide, and in the UK in particular, before considering some of the reasons behind this growth and the implications of increased interest in programmes with an international focus.

BackgroundThe International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) holds in trust the world's largest collection of rice diversity, with more than 130,000 accessions of cultivated rice and wild species. Between 2012 and 2018, a total of 2174 requests for rice germplasm were received from more than 1000 unique requestors. We documented and analyzed how genebank users made use of germplasm from IRRI. As we address food and nutrition security challenges in a changing context, we are motivated by the need to enhance the conservation, management, and use of rice genetic resources.MethodsWe examined the patterns of use of the IRRI genebank using distribution data and analyzed the results from a survey of germplasm recipients. The 2019 IRRI genebank user survey is the most recent attempt to obtain structured feedback from genebank end-users in multiple countries on their use of rice germplasm since 1995. We received 244 responses (a 35% response rate) out of the complete list of 694 respondents with valid email addresses. We also tested the relationship between the availability of germplasm information, proxied by the passport data completeness index (PDCI), and the demand for rice accessions, measured by the number of requests for each unique accession using a Negative Binomial regression model. We hypothesized that materials that are better documented are more frequently requested by users because they offer more useful information for targeted research and breeding.ResultsBetween 2012 and 2018, requests for germplasm from outside IRRI were received from 63 countries in all regions of the world, mostly from Asia. IRRI distributed germplasm externally to requestors from universities (32%), national research programs (14%), private companies (9%), and individuals, including farmers (24%) as well as other CGIAR centers (3%). The traits sought most often were tolerances to environmental stresses, followed by tolerance or resistance to biotic stresses. The majority of survey respondents confirmed the usefulness of IRRI germplasm for research, breeding, characterization, and evaluation. The analytical model confirmed the significant positive relationship between PDCI values and the demand for those accessions. The results indicated that improving the availability of information at the accession level will enhance the use of those materials. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to show the empirical link between documentation and use of germplasm.ConclusionsThe findings demonstrate the crucial role of IRRI's genebank as a key germplasm source for global rice research and development, with important implications for the conservation and use of rice genetic diversity in the future. Public sector organizations and the scientific community in general benefit from the conservation and availability of rice genetic resources. We also show the importance of the availability of data on conserved accession to enhance their use. To sustain the benefits, continuous investment in genebanks is needed to allow them to adapt to changes in technology and agricultural context.

Cities addressing climate change: Introducing a tripartite model for sustainable partnership

Cities addressing climate change: Introducing a tripartite model for sustainable partnership

The paper summarizes four presentations of the session “Environment and Wellbeing: The Role of Ecosystems for Sustainable Development” at the international conference “Sustainability in the Water- Energy-Food Nexus” held on 19-20th May 2014 in Bonn, Germany. The aim of the session was to present current stresses on ecosystem services imposed by global development trajectory, potential impacts on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and pathways to achieve SDGs. All four presentations agreed that global ecosystem services are under increasing pressure from degradation and may not be able to meet the growing Water-Energy- Food (WEF) demands especially for the developing world. Three examples from Tanzania, Cambodia and Niger made attempt to understand how governance policies attributed to natural resource depletion such as forestry and common grazing. The examples showed that governance policies favoring economic development are heavily contributing to clearing up natural resource bases. As a result, there were increasing conflicts among different resource user groups. Two other presentations introduce conceptual pathways to achieve the targets of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) under current resource stressed regime. The pathways suggested global technologies, decentralized solutions and consumption changes as the major means of achieving global sustainability and poverty eradication without any major trade-offs.