Innovation `imperative’ for securing rice production

21/02/2024 0 Comments read Climate Change, Environment & Development, Health & Science

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 19.02.2024 (SciDev.Net): Innovations in rice production and eco-friendly practises must be made viable for small-scale farmers in the global South in the face of climate threats, says Yvonne Pinto, incoming head of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

Relied upon by more than half of the world’s population for nearly 80 per cent of their dietary needs, rice is pivotal to ensuring global food security, with consumption increasing even as the climate crisis jeopardises production and the livelihoods of millions of people.

About 520.4 million metric tonnes were consumed worldwide in the 2022-23 crop year, up by almost a quarter from 437.2 million metric tonnes in the crop year 2008-2009, according to the data platform Statista. The Food and Agriculture Organization says developing countries produce and consume about 95 per cent of the global rice output.

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Growing appetite for nutrient-rich native Indigenous Australian foods

03/10/2023 0 Comments read Climate Change, Environment & Development, Health & Science, Indigenous, Travel

Lilly Pilly and Davidson Plum are some of the native Indigenous Australian produce being used in traditional and modern cuisine, cosmetics, pharmaceutical and nutraceutical industries. Photo Credit: ©Neena Bhandari

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 03.10.2023 (IPS): Growing up in Sydney, Kalkani Choolburra, a Girramay, Kuku Yalanji, Kalkadoon and Pitta Pitta woman from Far North Queensland, would frequently travel with her family up and down Australia’s eastern seaboard. Her grandfathers and uncles would bring fresh catch of dugong, her favourite bush food, and she would go hunting for the short neck turtle with her aunties and female cousins.

The traditional or subsistence hunting of dugongs and turtles has been an important part of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous Australians) people’s social and cultural lives. Its meat has been a vital source of protein for these communities, who have sustained themselves on the native flora and fauna for thousands of years.

Now, national and international chefs are incorporating some of these native Indigenous produce — notably Kakadu plum, Davidson plum, lemon myrtle, wattle seed, quandong, finger lime, bush tomato, muntries, mountain pepper, saltbush – into their dishes ranging from sushi and samosa, pizza and pies to cakes and muffins.

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Protect biodiversity to secure traditional medicine sources

25/08/2023 0 Comments read Climate Change, Environment & Development, Health & Science

Fostering conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, empowering indigenous communities, and building evidence on the efficacy and safety of traditional medicine knowledge could help with narrowing the health gap. Photo Credit: ©Neena Bhandari

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 25.08.2023 (SciDev.Net): Traditional medicines and their natural sources must be protected from threats such as illegal wildlife trade to secure their role in narrowing the global health gap, say scientists.

For millions of marginalised communities, traditional medicine is the only recourse for meeting their primary healthcare needs, especially in remote and rural areas that lack access to formal healthcare systems. The World Health Organization (WHO), which held its first-ever Traditional Medicine Global Summit in Gandhinagar, India, last week (17-18 August), estimates that 80 per cent of people in most Asian and African countries use some form of traditional medicine for primary healthcare.

“Developing countries need not look towards developed countries to provide solutions, rather they can embrace what they already have – indigenous knowledge…grounded in generations of experience,” said Ritu Bharadwaj, principal researcher in the UK-based climate change research group of the International Institute for Environment and Development. Continue reading →