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Recent efforts for an 'Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa' (AGRA) promote fertilizer, hybrid seeds, pesticides and biotechnology to increase agricultural production. This article examines the original Green Revolution to understand potential effects of a recent promotion of related technologies in Africa. Using a case study of Malawi, the implications of promoting high-input, intensive agriculture on food security, social relations and nutrition are considered. I argue that unless social inequalities and environmental concerns are taken into account, these technologies will intensify inequalities, increase environmental degradation and exacerbate malnutrition for the rural majority, while benefitting the urban poor, larger-scale farmers, agro-input dealers and transnational corporations involved in agribusiness.

Cover Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Notes on Contributors -- Preface -- List of Abbreviations -- 1 Introduction -- PART I DISPARITIES IN HEALTH OUTCOMES AND THE CHALLENGES TO HEALTH EQUITY -- 2 Malaria Risk Profiles, Treatment Seeking Practices and Disease Intervention Efforts in Poor Communities: A Case Study in Sierra Leone -- 3 The Geography of Maternal Mortality in Nigeria -- 4 Sex [Work] and [Structural] Violence: A Study of Commercial Sex Workers in Budhwar Peth, Pune, India -- 5 Aboriginal Health and Development: Two Steps Forward and One Step Back? -- PART II HEALTH ACCESS AND UTILISATION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES -- 6 The Place of 'Health' in Social Health Insurance in Developing Countries: A Study in Ghana's Upper West Region -- 7 From Effective Cure to Affective Care: Access Barriers and Entitlements to Health Care Among Urban Poor in Chennai, India -- 8 Human Resources for Health: Challenges Facing Sub-Saharan Africa -- 9 Wanting to Care: A Comparison of the Ethics of Health Worker Education in Cuba and the Philippines -- PART III ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES ON HEALTH AND DEVELOPMENT -- 10 Living in the Same Place, Eating in a Different Space: Food Security and Dietary Diversity of Youth Living in Rural Northern Malawi -- 11 Resource Depletion, Peak Oil, and Public Health: Planning for a Slow Growth Future -- 12 The Water-Health Nexus -- 13 Groundwater Arsenic Contamination and its Health and Social Impacts in Rural Bangladesh -- PART IV GLOBALISATION AND URBANISATION: GLOBAL POLICY CONSEQUENCES ON LOCAL HEALTH PROBLEMS -- 14 Tuberculosis: A Scourge for Development? -- 15 Globalisation and the Misplacement of Health: An Emerging Agenda -- 16 Global Reach, Local Depth, and New Cartographies of Metropolitan Health -- 17 Medical Migration From Zimbabwe: Towards New Solutions?.

International audience ; AbstractThere is consensus that the global food system is not delivering good nutrition for all and is causing environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity, such that a profound transformation is needed to meet the challenges of persistent malnutrition and rural poverty, aggravated by the growing consequences of climate change. Agroecological approaches have gained prominence in scientific, agricultural and political discourse in recent years, suggesting pathways to transform agricultural and food systems that address these issues. Here we present an extensive literature review of concepts, definitions and principles of agroecology, and their historical evolution, considering the three manifestations of agroecology as a science, a set of practices and a social movement; and relate them to the recent dialogue establishing a set of ten iconic elements of agroecology that have emerged from a global multi-stakeholder consultation and synthesis process. Based on this, a consolidated list of principles is developed and discussed in the context of presenting transition pathways to more sustainable food systems. The major outcomes of this paper are as follows. (1) Definition of 13 consolidated agroecological principles: recycling; input reduction; soil health; animal health; biodiversity; synergy; economic diversification; co-creation of knowledge; social values and diets; fairness; connectivity; land and natural resource governance; participation. (2) Confirmation that these principles are well aligned and complementary to the 10 elements of agroecology developed by FAO but articulate requirements of soil and animal health more explicitly and distinguish between biodiversity and economic diversification. (3) Clarification that application of these generic principles can generate diverse pathways for incremental and transformational change towards more sustainable farming and food systems. (4) Identification of four key entry points associated with the elements: diversity; circular and ...

Climate change research is at an impasse. The transformation of economies and everyday practices is more urgent, and yet appears ever more daunting as attempts at behaviour change, regulations, and global agreements confront material and social-political infrastructures that support the status quo. Effective action requires new ways of conceptualizing society, climate and environment and yet current research struggles to break free of established categories. In response, this contribution revisits important insights from the social sciences and humanities on the co-production of political economies, cultures, societies and biophysical relations and shows the possibilities for ontological pluralism to open up for new imaginations. Its intention is to help generate a different framing of socionatural change that goes beyond the current science-policy-behavioural change pathway. It puts forward several moments of inadvertent concealment in contemporary debates that stem directly from the way issues are framed and imagined in contemporary discourses. By placing values, normative commitments, and experiential and plural ways of knowing from around the world at the centre of climate knowledge, we confront climate change with contested politics and the everyday foundations of action rather than just data.

ABSTRACT Climate change research is at an impasse. The transformation of economies and everyday practices is more urgent, and yet appears ever more daunting as attempts at behaviour change, regulations, and global agreements confront material and social-political infrastructures that support the status quo. Effective action requires new ways of conceptualizing society, climate and environment and yet current research struggles to break free of established categories. In response, this contribution revisits important insights from the social sciences and humanities on the co-production of political economies, cultures, societies and biophysical relations and shows the possibilities for ontological pluralism to open up for new imaginations. Its intention is to help generate a different framing of socionatural change that goes beyond the current science-policy-behavioural change pathway. It puts forward several moments of inadvertent concealment in contemporary debates that stem directly from the way issues are framed and imagined in contemporary discourses. By placing values, normative commitments, and experiential and plural ways of knowing from around the world at the centre of climate knowledge, we confront climate change with contested politics and the everyday foundations of action rather than just data. ; publishedVersion