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A new U.S. tool maps where heat will be dangerous for your health

The daily updated HeatRisk map uses color coding to show where the health threat from heat is highest and offers tips on how to stay safe.

Pluto’s heart-shaped basin might not hide an ocean after all

Language models may miss signs of depression in Black people’s Facebook posts

Our picture of habitability on Europa, a top contender for hosting life, is changing

A new road map shows how to prevent pandemics

Aimee Grant investigates the needs of autistic people

These windpipe cells trigger coughs to keep water out of the lungs

Trending stories.

A new look at Ötzi the Iceman’s DNA reveals new ancestry and other surprises

Social media harms teens’ mental health, mounting evidence shows. What now?

Tiny treadmills show how fruit flies walk

Jupiter’s moon Io may have been volcanically active ever since it was born

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Spotlight on Health

A protein found in sweat may protect people from Lyme disease

The protein stopped Borrelia burgdorferi, a bacterium that is transmitted by ticks, from growing in dishes or infecting mice.

What can period blood reveal about a person’s health?

Teens are using an unregulated form of thc. here’s what we know, from the archives.

How to Stop a Biological Clock

March 9, 1974 Vol. 105 No. #10

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March 23, 2024 Vol. 205 No. 6

How patient-led research could speed up medical innovation

Jwst spies hints of a neutron star left behind by supernova 1987a, a genetic parasite may explain why humans and other apes lack tails.

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How brain implants are treating depression

This six-part series follows people whose lives have been changed by an experimental treatment called deep brain stimulation.

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Physicists take a major step toward making a nuclear clock

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Research & Development World

Microplastics are bad, but ignoring science is worse

How meme-promoted science makes it difficult to focus on what's factual.

2024 R&D 100 Awards now open for submissions

PFAS — the collateral damage begins

SpaceX returns vital life science research sponsored by the ISS National Lab

Nokia unveils plans for new state-of-the-art R&D facility in New Jersey tech hub

U.S. DOE announces intent to issue $4.8M in secure communications development funding 

SwRI’s Dr. Alan Stern conducts space research aboard Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity

New Dotmatics Luma scientific data platform helps enable AI and ML in life sciences

Northern Germany’s expanding R&D ecosystem focuses on space

Today on r&d world.

By Tim Studt | April 22, 2024

AI demand continues to grow faster than supply

By Heather Hall | April 18, 2024

CANDLE (CANcer Distributed Learning Environment) is the R&D 100 winner of the day

By Heather Hall | April 17, 2024

Stravito’s new Assistant is a conversational insights companion advancing generative AI

By Heather Hall | April 16, 2024

Q-CTRL hires defense industry leader to expand business partnerships in US and UK

By Tim Studt | April 16, 2024

Chip manufacturing explodes with AI growth, in this week’s R&D Power Index

By Heather Hall | April 11, 2024

Additive manufactured cutting tool for precision machining is the R&D 100 winner of the day

Luma Lab Connect unlocks value of lab data to accelerate scientific R&D decision-making

By Heather Hall | April 9, 2024

SuperNeuro: An Accelerated Neuromorphic Computing Simulator is R&D 100 winner of the day

By Tim Studt | April 8, 2024

Sanofi reprioritizing its R&D structure, in this week’s R&D Power Index

By Olivier Lucas, Ph.D. | April 4, 2024

For drug discovery, comprehensive genomic analysis is essential

By Heather Hall | April 3, 2024

Olena Palasyuk, Ames National Laboratory R&D Technician of the Year

New Applied Biosystems TaqMan QSY2 probes enable multiplexing of research

By Heather Hall | April 2, 2024

Cerberus: Cybersecurity for EV Charging Infrastructure — R&D 100 winner of the day

By Nick Talken | April 2, 2024

The great lab of the future debate: Modular or singular approach? 

By Tim Studt | April 1, 2024

Korean chip firm to build plant near Purdue, in this week’s R&D Power Index

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Investigation onboard the Space Station seeks new insights into cooling technology for electronics

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• April 22, 2024 | Revolutionizing Brain Health: Rice University Unveils Tiny, Implantable Brain Stimulator
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Technology News

Read the latest technology news on SciTechDaily, your comprehensive source for the latest breakthroughs, trends, and innovations shaping the world of technology. We bring you up-to-date insights on a wide array of topics, from cutting-edge advancements in artificial intelligence and robotics to the latest in green technologies, telecommunications, and more.

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Technology April 22, 2024

Revolutionizing Brain Health: Rice University Unveils Tiny, Implantable Brain Stimulator

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Breakthrough Device Brings Scientists a Step Closer to Successfully Growing Plants in Space

MIT Unlocks the Power of 2D Magnets for Future Computing

Science Made Simple: How Do Lithium-Ion Batteries Work?

Turbocharged Skyrmions: Accelerating Toward the Future of Computing

Crucial Connection Completed: Laying the Foundation for the Quantum Internet

MIT’s New AI Model Predicts Human Behavior With Uncanny Accuracy

Reimagining Memory: New Research Reveals That Superconducting Loops Mimic the Brain

New Material Supercharges Electrostatic Energy Storage – 19x Energy Density

Technology April 18, 2024

Quantum Internet Unleashed With HiFi’s Laser Breakthrough

Fraunhofer IAF achieves record output power with VECSEL for quantum frequency converters. The expansion of fiber optics is progressing worldwide, which not only increases the…

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Researchers Develop “Goldene” – A New Form of Ultra-Thin Gold With Semiconductor Properties

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Revolutionizing 3D: New Holographic Technique Breaks Computational Barriers

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Revolutionizing Energy Storage: Li-CO2 Batteries With Carbon Capture

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Research and Development

Research and development underpin nearly all the transformative changes we see on Our World in Data .

Cures for diseases, vaccines , and techniques to prevent infection have helped us survive beyond childhood and live much longer lives . Understanding hygiene, water, and sanitation have saved countless lives from preventable diseases. 

Electricity, artificial light, transport, and other energy technologies have transformed our lives. Agricultural research has broken deadlocks in crop yields and allowed us to produce enough food for eight billion people.

Even beyond the long list of technological advances, research into effective political and economic systems, human rights, and social sciences have reshaped societies worldwide.

More research is needed to address our largest problems – old and new. We will need innovations in clean energy to tackle climate change, in agriculture to feed a growing population, and developments in medical research to tackle existing and prevent new diseases. Research is vital to address emerging and ongoing risks such as artificial intelligence and nuclear weapons .

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The world needs ideas and innovation to make progress against the many problems we face. But opportunities are limited to only a small number of well-off children.

To transition towards low-carbon energy systems we need low-cost energy storage. Battery costs have been falling quickly.

Hannah Ritchie

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Developmental biology articles from across Nature Portfolio

Developmental biology is the field of biology that studies the processes by which multicellular organisms grow and develop, controlled by their genes. Knowledge of normal developmental processes can aid in the understanding of developmental abnormalities and other conditions such as cancer.

The sympathetic nervous system arose in the earliest vertebrates

The sympathetic nervous system, which enables the fight-or-flight response, was thought to be present only in jawed vertebrates. Analysis of a jawless vertebrate suggests that this system might be a feature of all animals with a spine.

• Uwe Ernsberger
• Hermann Rohrer

Evolutionary origin of vertebrate neural crest and neuromesodermal cells

A cell population in the neural plate border region of embryos of ascidians, the closest relatives of vertebrates, has properties similar to those of the neural crest cells and neuromesodermal cells of vertebrate embryos. The evolutionary origin of these multipotent cells may date back to the common ancestor of vertebrates and ascidians.

An immunological window to the brain

The eye and the brain are both recognized as immune-privileged sites. Research now indicates that responses in the eye mirror those in the central nervous system (CNS), offering major implications for the treatment of CNS cancers and infections.

• James T. Walsh
• Jonathan Kipnis

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hoxc12 / c13 as key regulators for rebooting the developmental program in Xenopus limb regeneration

During organ regeneration, gene expression patterns similar to those in normal development are reestablished. Here, Kawasumi-Kita et al. explore core rebooting factors that operate during Xenopus limb regeneration. Their results indicate that hoxc12 and hoxc13 are critical for reactivating tissue growth.

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Targeting dysregulated phago-/auto-lysosomes in Sertoli cells to ameliorate late-onset hypogonadism

Late-onset hypogonadism (LOH) can occur with male reproductive aging and is characterized by declining testosterone levels as well as other clinical symptoms. Here the authors show that dysregulated phago-/auto-lysosomes in Sertoli cells are a key feature of LOH, linking metabolism and aging, and that pharmaceutical targeting of lysosome dysfunction can alleviate LOH in mice.

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LSD1 drives intestinal epithelial maturation and controls small intestinal immune cell composition independent of microbiota in a murine model

Post birth the gastrointestinal tract undergoes development including the establishment of the microbiome, establishment of tolerance and maturation of the epithelium. Here the authors show a histone demethylase LSD1 is required for postnatal intestinal epithelium maturation and how this impacts local immune cell composition and gut homeostasis.

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Zebrafish polg2 knock-out recapitulates human POLG-disorders; implications for drug treatment

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LKRSDH-dependent histone modifications of insulin - like peptide sites contribute to age-related circadian rhythm changes

Age has an impact on circadian rhythm. Here, the authors report that LKRSDH-dependent H3R17me2 and H3K27me3 at insulin-like peptide sites contribute to age-related circadian rhythm change in Drosophila .

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News and Comment

Inflammation and mitophagy are mitochondrial checkpoints to aging

Cellular and organismal aging have been consistently associated with mitochondrial dysfunction and inflammation. Accumulating evidence indicates that aging-related inflammatory responses are mechanistically linked to compromised mitochondrial integrity coupled with mtDNA-driven CGAS activation, a process that is tonically inhibited by mitophagy.

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A map of mouse embryogenesis

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Research and/or Development? Financial Frictions and Innovation Investment

Abstract U.S. firms have reduced their investment in scientific research (“R”) compared to product development (“D”), raising questions about the returns to each type of investment, and about the reasons for this shift. We use Census data that disaggregates “R” from “D” to study how US firms adjust their innovation investments in response to an external increase in funding cost. Companies with greater demand for refinancing during the 2008 financial crisis made larger cuts to R&D investment. This reduction in R&D is achieved almost entirely by reducing investments in basic and applied research. Development remains essentially unchanged. Although patenting is more strongly correlated with development than research investments, the impact of the crisis appears in citation-weighted patent output after 3 to 5 years. Finally, we show that if other firms patenting similar technologies are exposed to the crisis, then a focal firm's Development investment declines. We consider several mechanisms that could explain these results, and without ruling out every alternative, conclude that the overall pattern is consistent with an important role for technological competition in R&D financing decisions.

We thank Frank Limehouse, Lanwei Yang and Shahin Davoudpour for their help and advices working with the Census data. We thank Davin Wang and Anoushka Nalwa for the excellent research assistance. We also thank the seminar participants at Rice University, Erasmus Rotterdam, Hong Kong University, Simon Business School (University of Rochester), Kellogg School of Management and Yeshiva University, FGV (Sao Paolo), and the conference participants at NBER Productivity (2023), CICF (2023), FIRS (2023), MFA (2023), Booth Empirical Finance Conference (2023), HEC Paris (2022) for the useful comments. In particular, we want to thank for their feedbacks Ramin Baghai (discussant), Bo Bian (discussant), Sharon Belenzon (discussant), Max Maksimovic (discussant), Jamie Brown, Yael Hochberg, Johan Hombert, Sabrina Howell, Kilian Huber, David Matsa, Christian Opp, Dimitris Papanikolaou, K. Ramesh, Kunal Sachdeva, Paola Sapienza, Tarik Umar, Jonathan Wallen, Pavel Zryumov. Any views expressed are those of the authors and not those of the U.S. Census Bureau. The Census Bureau’s Disclosure Review Board and Disclosure Avoidance Officers have reviewed this information product for unauthorized disclosure of confidential information and have approved the disclosure avoidance practices applied to this release. This research was performed at a Federal Statistical Research Data Center under FSRDC Project Number 1874. (CBDRB-FY22-P1874-R9607, CBDRB-FY23-P1874-R10456). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

I have consulted and served as an expert witness on several legal matters related to Standard Essential Patents.

MARC RIS BibTeΧ

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Non-Technical Summaries

• Financial Stress Can Squeeze the ‘R’ Out of R&D A financial crisis can affect the economy’s long-term trajectory if it alters investment behavior. In Research and/or...

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Generative AI develops potential new drugs for antibiotic-resistant bacteria

Stanford Medicine researchers devise a new artificial intelligence model, SyntheMol, which creates recipes for chemists to synthesize the drugs in the lab.

March 28, 2024 - By Rachel Tompa

Acinetobacter baumannii infection is a leading cause of death related to antibiotic resistance. Stanford Medicine researchers employed artificial intelligence to provide recipes for drugs that can treat it.  Kateryna Kon /Shutterstock.com

With nearly 5 million deaths linked to antibiotic resistance globally every year, new ways to combat resistant bacterial strains are urgently needed.

Researchers at Stanford Medicine and McMaster University are tackling this problem with generative artificial intelligence. A new model, dubbed SyntheMol (for synthesizing molecules), created structures and chemical recipes for six novel drugs aimed at killing resistant strains of Acinetobacter baumannii, one of the leading pathogens responsible for antibacterial resistance-related deaths.

The researchers described their model and experimental validation of these new compounds in a study published March 22 in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence .

“There’s a huge public health need to develop new antibiotics quickly,” said James Zou , PhD, an associate professor of biomedical data science and co-senior author on the study. “Our hypothesis was that there are a lot of potential molecules out there that could be effective drugs, but we haven’t made or tested them yet. That’s why we wanted to use AI to design entirely new molecules that have never been seen in nature.”

Before the advent of generative AI, the same type of artificial intelligence technology that underlies large language models like ChatGPT, researchers had taken different computational approaches to antibiotic development. They used algorithms to scroll through existing drug libraries, identifying those compounds most likely to act against a given pathogen. This technique, which sifted through 100 million known compounds , yielded results but just scratched the surface in finding all the chemical compounds that could have antibacterial properties.

Kyle Swanson

“Chemical space is gigantic,” said Kyle Swanson , a Stanford computational science doctoral student and co-lead author on the study. “People have estimated that there are close to 10 60 possible drug-like molecules. So, 100 million is nowhere close to covering that entire space.”

Hallucinating for drug development

Generative AI’s tendency to “hallucinate,” or make up responses out of whole cloth, could be a boon when it comes to drug discovery, but previous attempts to generate new drugs with this kind of AI resulted in compounds that would be impossible to make in the real world, Swanson said. The researchers needed to put guardrails around SyntheMol’s activity — namely, to ensure that any molecules the model dreamed up could be synthesized in a lab.

“We’ve approached this problem by trying to bridge that gap between computational work and wet lab validation,” Swanson said.

The model was trained to construct potential drugs using a library of more than 130,000 molecular building blocks and a set of validated chemical reactions. It generated not only the final compound but also the steps it took with those building blocks, giving the researchers a set of recipes to produce the drugs.

The researchers also trained the model on existing data of different chemicals’ antibacterial activity against A. baumannii . With these guidelines and its building block starting set, SyntheMol generated around 25,000 possible antibiotics and the recipes to make them in less than nine hours. To prevent the bacteria from quickly developing resistance to the new compounds, researchers then filtered the generated compounds to only those that were dissimilar from existing compounds.

“Now we have not just entirely new molecules but also explicit instructions for how to make those molecules,” Zou said.

A new chemical space

The researchers chose the 70 compounds with the highest potential to kill the bacterium and worked with the Ukrainian chemical company Enamine to synthesize them. The company was able to efficiently generate 58 of these compounds, six of which killed a resistant strain of A. baumannii when researchers tested them in the lab. These new compounds also showed antibacterial activity against other kinds of infectious bacteria prone to antibiotic resistance, including E. coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae and MRSA.

The scientists were able to further test two of the six compounds for toxicity in mice, as the other four didn’t dissolve in water. The two they tested seemed safe; the next step is to test the drugs in mice infected with A. baumannii to see if they work in a living body, Zou said.

The six compounds are vastly different from each other and from existing antibiotics. The researchers don’t know how their antibacterial properties work at the molecular level, but exploring those details could yield general principles relevant to other antibiotic development.

“This AI is really designing and teaching us about this entirely new part of the chemical space that humans just haven’t explored before,” Zou said.

Zou and Swanson are also refining SyntheMol and broadening its reach. They’re collaborating with other research groups to use the model for drug discovery for heart disease and to create new fluorescent molecules for laboratory research.

The study was funded by the Weston Family Foundation, the David Braley Centre for Antibiotic Discovery, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, M. and M. Heersink, the Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub, and the Knight-Hennessy scholarship.

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• Rachel Tompa Rachel Tompa is a freelance science writer.

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• What Is R&D?
• Understanding R&D
• Types of R&D
• Pros and Cons
• Considerations
• R&D vs. Applied Research
• Who Spends the Most?

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Research and Development (R&D) Definition, Types, and Importance

Investopedia / Ellen Lindner

What Is Research and Development (R&D)?

The term research and development (R&D) is used to describe a series of activities that companies undertake to innovate and introduce new products and services. R&D is often the first stage in the development process. Companies require knowledge, talent, and investment in order to further their R&D needs and goals. The purpose of research and development is generally to take new products and services to market and add to the company's bottom line .

Key Takeaways

• Research and development represents the activities companies undertake to innovate and introduce new products and services or to improve their existing offerings.
• R&D allows a company to stay ahead of its competition by catering to new wants or needs in the market.
• Companies in different sectors and industries conduct R&D—pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and technology companies generally spend the most.
• R&D is often a broad approach to exploratory advancement, while applied research is more geared towards researching a more narrow scope.
• The accounting for treatment for R&D costs can materially impact a company's income statement and balance sheet.

Understanding Research and Development (R&D)

The concept of research and development is widely linked to innovation both in the corporate and government sectors. R&D allows a company to stay ahead of its competition. Without an R&D program, a company may not survive on its own and may have to rely on other ways to innovate such as engaging in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) or partnerships. Through R&D, companies can design new products and improve their existing offerings.

R&D is distinct from most operational activities performed by a corporation. The research and/or development is typically not performed with the expectation of immediate profit. Instead, it is expected to contribute to the long-term profitability of a company. R&D may often allow companies to secure intellectual property, including patents , copyrights, and trademarks as discoveries are made and products created.

Companies that set up and employ departments dedicated entirely to R&D commit substantial capital to the effort. They must estimate the risk-adjusted return on their R&D expenditures, which inevitably involves risk of capital. That's because there is no immediate payoff, and the return on investment (ROI) is uncertain. As more money is invested in R&D, the level of capital risk increases. Other companies may choose to outsource their R&D for a variety of reasons including size and cost.

Companies across all sectors and industries undergo R&D activities. Corporations experience growth through these improvements and the development of new goods and services. Pharmaceuticals, semiconductors , and software/technology companies tend to spend the most on R&D. In Europe, R&D is known as research and technical or technological development.

Many small and mid-sized businesses may choose to outsource their R&D efforts because they don't have the right staff in-house to meet their needs.

Types of R&D

There are several different types of R&D that exist in the corporate world and within government. The type used depends entirely on the entity undertaking it and the results can differ.

Basic Research

There are business incubators and accelerators, where corporations invest in startups and provide funding assistance and guidance to entrepreneurs in the hope that innovations will result that they can use to their benefit.

M&As and partnerships are also forms of R&D as companies join forces to take advantage of other companies' institutional knowledge and talent.

Applied Research

One R&D model is a department staffed primarily by engineers who develop new products —a task that typically involves extensive research. There is no specific goal or application in mind with this model. Instead, the research is done for the sake of research.

Development Research

This model involves a department composed of industrial scientists or researchers, all of who are tasked with applied research in technical, scientific, or industrial fields. This model facilitates the development of future products or the improvement of current products and/or operating procedures.

$42.7 billion of research and development costs later, Amazon was granted 2,244 new patents in 2020. Their patents included advancements in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cloud computing.

Advantages and Disadvantages of R&D

There are several key benefits to research and development. It facilitates innovation, allowing companies to improve existing products and services or by letting them develop new ones to bring to the market.

Because R&D also is a key component of innovation, it requires a greater degree of skill from employees who take part. This allows companies to expand their talent pool, which often comes with special skill sets.

The advantages go beyond corporations. Consumers stand to benefit from R&D because it gives them better, high-quality products and services as well as a wider range of options. Corporations can, therefore, rely on consumers to remain loyal to their brands. It also helps drive productivity and economic growth.

Disadvantages

One of the major drawbacks to R&D is the cost. First, there is the financial expense as it requires a significant investment of cash upfront. This can include setting up a separate R&D department, hiring talent, and product and service testing, among others.

Innovation doesn't happen overnight so there is also a time factor to consider. This means that it takes a lot of time to bring products and services to market from conception to production to delivery.

Because it does take time to go from concept to product, companies stand the risk of being at the mercy of changing market trends . So what they thought may be a great seller at one time may reach the market too late and not fly off the shelves once it's ready.

Facilitates innovation

Improved or new products and services

Expands knowledge and talent pool

Increased consumer choice and brand loyalty

Economic driver

Financial investment

Shifting market trends

R&D Accounting

R&D may be beneficial to a company's bottom line, but it is considered an expense . After all, companies spend substantial amounts on research and trying to develop new products and services. As such, these expenses are often reported for accounting purposes on the income statement and do not carry long-term value.

There are certain situations where R&D costs are capitalized and reported on the balance sheet. Some examples include but are not limited to:

• Materials, fixed assets, or other assets have alternative future uses with an estimable value and useful life.
• Software that can be converted or applied elsewhere in the company to have a useful life beyond a specific single R&D project.
• Indirect costs or overhead expenses allocated between projects.
• R&D purchased from a third party that is accompanied by intangible value. That intangible asset may be recorded as a separate balance sheet asset.

R&D Considerations

Before taking on the task of research and development, it's important for companies and governments to consider some of the key factors associated with it. Some of the most notable considerations are:

• Objectives and Outcome: One of the most important factors to consider is the intended goals of the R&D project. Is it to innovate and fill a need for certain products that aren't being sold? Or is it to make improvements on existing ones? Whatever the reason, it's always important to note that there should be some flexibility as things can change over time.
• Timing: R&D requires a lot of time. This involves reviewing the market to see where there may be a lack of certain products and services or finding ways to improve on those that are already on the shelves.
• Cost: R&D costs a great deal of money, especially when it comes to the upfront costs. And there may be higher costs associated with the conception and production of new products rather than updating existing ones.
• Risks: As with any venture, R&D does come with risks. R&D doesn't come with any guarantees, no matter the time and money that goes into it. This means that companies and governments may sacrifice their ROI if the end product isn't successful.

Research and Development vs. Applied Research

Basic research is aimed at a fuller, more complete understanding of the fundamental aspects of a concept or phenomenon. This understanding is generally the first step in R&D. These activities provide a basis of information without directed applications toward products, policies, or operational processes .

Applied research entails the activities used to gain knowledge with a specific goal in mind. The activities may be to determine and develop new products, policies, or operational processes. While basic research is time-consuming, applied research is painstaking and more costly because of its detailed and complex nature.

Who Spends the Most on R&D?

Companies spend billions of dollars on R&D to produce the newest, most sought-after products. According to public company filings, these companies incurred the highest research and development spending in 2020:

• Amazon: $42.7 billion
• Alphabet.: $27.6 billion
• Huawei: $22.0 billion
• Microsoft: $19.3 billion
• Apple: $18.8 billion
• Samsung: $18.8 billion
• Facebook: $18.5 billion

What Types of Activities Can Be Found in Research and Development?

Research and development activities focus on the innovation of new products or services in a company. Among the primary purposes of R&D activities is for a company to remain competitive as it produces products that advance and elevate its current product line. Since R&D typically operates on a longer-term horizon, its activities are not anticipated to generate immediate returns. However, in time, R&D projects may lead to patents, trademarks, or breakthrough discoveries with lasting benefits to the company. 

What Is an Example of Research and Development?

Alphabet allocated over $16 billion annually to R&D in 2018. Under its R&D arm X, the moonshot factory, it has developed Waymo self-driving cars. Meanwhile, Amazon has spent even more on R&D projects, with key developments in cloud computing and its cashier-less store Amazon Go. At the same time, R&D can take the approach of a merger & acquisition, where a company will leverage the talent and intel of another company to create a competitive edge. The same can be said with company investment in accelerators and incubators, whose developments it could later leverage.

Why Is Research and Development Important?

Given the rapid rate of technological advancement, R&D is important for companies to stay competitive. Specifically, R&D allows companies to create products that are difficult for their competitors to replicate. Meanwhile, R&D efforts can lead to improved productivity that helps increase margins, further creating an edge in outpacing competitors. From a broader perspective, R&D can allow a company to stay ahead of the curve, anticipating customer demands or trends.

There are many things companies can do in order to advance in their industries and the overall market. Research and development is just one way they can set themselves apart from their competition. It opens up the potential for innovation and increasing sales. But it does come with some drawbacks—the most obvious being the financial cost and the time it takes to innovate.

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AI Index: State of AI in 13 Charts

In the new report, foundation models dominate, benchmarks fall, prices skyrocket, and on the global stage, the U.S. overshadows.

This year’s AI Index — a 500-page report tracking 2023’s worldwide trends in AI — is out.

The index is an independent initiative at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), led by the AI Index Steering Committee, an interdisciplinary group of experts from across academia and industry. This year’s report covers the rise of multimodal foundation models, major cash investments into generative AI, new performance benchmarks, shifting global opinions, and new major regulations.

Don’t have an afternoon to pore through the findings? Check out the high level here.

A Move Toward Open-Sourced

This past year, organizations released 149 foundation models, more than double the number released in 2022. Of these newly released models, 65.7% were open-source (meaning they can be freely used and modified by anyone), compared with only 44.4% in 2022 and 33.3% in 2021.

But At a Cost of Performance?

Closed-source models still outperform their open-sourced counterparts. On 10 selected benchmarks, closed models achieved a median performance advantage of 24.2%, with differences ranging from as little as 4.0% on mathematical tasks like GSM8K to as much as 317.7% on agentic tasks like AgentBench.

Biggest Players

Industry dominates AI, especially in building and releasing foundation models. This past year Google edged out other industry players in releasing the most models, including Gemini and RT-2. In fact, since 2019, Google has led in releasing the most foundation models, with a total of 40, followed by OpenAI with 20. Academia trails industry: This past year, UC Berkeley released three models and Stanford two.

Industry Dwarfs All

If you needed more striking evidence that corporate AI is the only player in the room right now, this should do it. In 2023, industry accounted for 72% of all new foundation models.

Prices Skyrocket

One of the reasons academia and government have been edged out of the AI race: the exponential increase in cost of training these giant models. Google’s Gemini Ultra cost an estimated $191 million worth of compute to train, while OpenAI’s GPT-4 cost an estimated $78 million. In comparison, in 2017, the original Transformer model, which introduced the architecture that underpins virtually every modern LLM, cost around $900.

What AI Race?

At least in terms of notable machine learning models, the United States vastly outpaced other countries in 2023, developing a total of 61 models in 2023. Since 2019, the U.S. has consistently led in originating the majority of notable models, followed by China and the UK.

Move Over, Human

As of 2023, AI has hit human-level performance on many significant AI benchmarks, from those testing reading comprehension to visual reasoning. Still, it falls just short on some benchmarks like competition-level math. Because AI has been blasting past so many standard benchmarks, AI scholars have had to create new and more difficult challenges. This year’s index also tracked several of these new benchmarks, including those for tasks in coding, advanced reasoning, and agentic behavior.

Private Investment Drops (But We See You, GenAI)

While AI private investment has steadily dropped since 2021, generative AI is gaining steam. In 2023, the sector attracted $25.2 billion, nearly ninefold the investment of 2022 and about 30 times the amount from 2019 (call it the ChatGPT effect). Generative AI accounted for over a quarter of all AI-related private investments in 2023.

U.S. Wins $$ Race

And again, in 2023 the United States dominates in AI private investment. In 2023, the $67.2 billion invested in the U.S. was roughly 8.7 times greater than the amount invested in the next highest country, China, and 17.8 times the amount invested in the United Kingdom. That lineup looks the same when zooming out: Cumulatively since 2013, the United States leads investments at $335.2 billion, followed by China with $103.7 billion, and the United Kingdom at $22.3 billion.

Where is Corporate Adoption?

More companies are implementing AI in some part of their business: In surveys, 55% of organizations said they were using AI in 2023, up from 50% in 2022 and 20% in 2017. Businesses report using AI to automate contact centers, personalize content, and acquire new customers. 

Younger and Wealthier People Worry About Jobs

Globally, most people expect AI to change their jobs, and more than a third expect AI to replace them. Younger generations — Gen Z and millennials — anticipate more substantial effects from AI compared with older generations like Gen X and baby boomers. Specifically, 66% of Gen Z compared with 46% of boomer respondents believe AI will significantly affect their current jobs. Meanwhile, individuals with higher incomes, more education, and decision-making roles foresee AI having a great impact on their employment.

While the Commonwealth Worries About AI Products

When asked in a survey about whether AI products and services make you nervous, 69% of Aussies and 65% of Brits said yes. Japan is the least worried about their AI products at 23%.  

Regulation Rallies

More American regulatory agencies are passing regulations to protect citizens and govern the use of AI tools and data. For example, the Copyright Office and the Library of Congress passed copyright registration guidance concerning works that contained material generated by AI, while the Securities and Exchange Commission developed a cybersecurity risk management strategy, governance, and incident disclosure plan. The agencies to pass the most regulation were the Executive Office of the President and the Commerce Department. 

The AI Index was first created to track AI development. The index collaborates with such organizations as LinkedIn, Quid, McKinsey, Studyportals, the Schwartz Reisman Institute, and the International Federation of Robotics to gather the most current research and feature important insights on the AI ecosystem. 

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April 22, 2024

UW leads international group in semiconductor research and workforce development

The University of Washington is at the forefront of an international effort to innovate the semiconductor industry while building a skilled U.S.-based workforce to design and manufacture chip technology. UPWARDS for the Future will support work already underway in the UW’s Washington Nanofabrication Faciliity. Video c redit: Kiyomi Taguchi, UW News

The University of Washington is at the forefront of an international effort to innovate the semiconductor industry while building a skilled U.S.-based workforce to design and manufacture chip technology.

Part of a landmark education partnership that was announced in May 2023 at the G7 meeting in Japan, the effort brings together researchers and faculty from the U.S. and Japan to support the University Partnership for Workforce Advancement and Research & Development in Semiconductors (UPWARDS) for the Future project. Micron Technology and Tokyo Electron Limited, as founding industry partners, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and universities together are investing over $60 million for the five-year project. Many of the participants are attending kick-off activities at the UW this week.

“With our University’s proven track record of using public research investment to spur economic and technological growth, the UW is excited to be taking the lead in expanding our capacity to educate professionals and drive discovery in the critical field of semiconductors,” said UW President Ana Mari Cauce. “We’re grateful to Senator Cantwell for her leadership and for the collaboration of our partners.”

A Seattle kickoff event hosted by the UW today and tomorrow will bring together university teams from Japan and the U.S. along with industry leaders and elected officials. Learn more about UPWARDS for the Future .

Modern technology — including household appliances, automobiles, computers and defense systems — relies on semiconductors. The semiconductor was invented in the U.S., yet today the U.S. produces about only 10% of the world’s supply. Recognizing the economic and national security risks this poses, U.S. policymakers passed the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) & Science Act in 2022 to strengthen the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem.

“Our nation’s success in advanced technologies depends on having a skilled workforce. The University of Washington will help establish the Pacific Northwest as a leader by training the more than 90,000 students, faculty, and skilled professionals needed to build the most advanced chips right here in the United States,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who was instrumental in passing the landmark CHIPS & Science bill. “If we want to lead the world tomorrow, we must invest in worker training today.”

Boise, Ida.-based Micron and the partner universities will jointly recruit new faculty members, named as UPWARDS Professors, who will work on high-impact research projects with the industry partners. In addition to their research responsibilities, UPWARDS Professors will also contribute to curriculum development and other UPWARDS for the Future activities, including advising exchange students and graduate fellows. The grants will also support graduate fellowships and provide research experiences for undergraduate students.

Initiatives like UPWARDS for the Future prioritize expanding the STEM talent pipeline to reach groups that are underrepresented in the semiconductor industry today. This vision for UPWARDS for the Future aligns with UW efforts to close the STEM gender gap, establish pathways into higher education and facilitate new programs dedicated to attracting and retaining historically underrepresented groups. President Cauce and College of Engineering Dean Nancy Albritton are members of the national Education Group for Diversification and Growth in Engineering Consortium, or EDGE. And, last summer, the UW joined the Northwest University Semiconductor Network, led by Micron, to enhance experiential learning opportunities in the semiconductor industry, prioritizing access for underrepresented students, particularly in rural and tribal communities.

“We are proud to be part of this innovation partnership and to lead the NSF grant for UPWARDS. As Washington state’s leading educator of engineers and as a leader in chip engineering and workforce development for the global innovation economy, it is an honor to work collaboratively with academic and industry partners to drive advancements in this crucial scientific field,” Albritton said.

In addition to the UW, the UPWARDS for the Future partnership includes five U.S. institutions: Boise State, Purdue, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rochester Institute of Technology and Virginia Tech; and five Japanese universities: Hiroshima University, Kyushu University, Nagoya University, Tohoku University and Tokyo Institute of Technology. The UW will share the $10 million NSF grant with the five U.S. institutions, while Micron’s and Tokyo Electron’s $20 million gifts will be shared among the 11 U.S. and Japanese institutions.

“The UPWARDS for the Future program sets a prime model of government-industry-academia partnership, propelling the development of the U.S. semiconductor technology workforce. This initiative stands out with an emphasis on international collaboration, providing students with invaluable insights and experience into the industry’s international supply chain dynamics,” said Mo Li , UW professor of both electrical and computer engineering and physics, as well as a faculty member of the UW Institute for Nano-Engineered Systems. Li will lead UW’s efforts supporting UPWARDS for the Future.

The UPWARDS program includes five pillar activities, including: Semiconductor Curriculum Design and Implementation; Expanding Women Workforces in Semiconductors; Experiential Learning; US-Japan International Student Faculty Exchange; and Memory-centric Research Projects. At this week’s workshop, the 11 institutions aim to establish across-the-board plans on student exchange, curriculum sharing and standardization, and research collaboration.

Semiconductor engineering is the second strategic university-corporate partnership initiative concluded between American and Japanese academic institutions and the corporate sector since May 2022, when President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made a commitment to advance U.S.-Japan science and technology cooperation. The UW also is the lead partner on the Cross Pacific AI Hub partnership announced on April 10, to lead innovation and technological breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. Both UPWARDS for the Future and the Cross Pacific AI Hub are cornerstones of the UW’s global impact, building lasting relationships with peer institutions and industry on both sides of the Pacific to support UW students, faculty and staff on work to address critical issues.

For more information, contact Li at [email protected].

Here’s what other leaders said about UPWARDS for the Future:

“Economic security depends on the ‘3 M’s’: machines, minerals, and minds. The UPWARDS network is developing the workforce that we need to secure semiconductor supply chains and delivering on the promise made by President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida to elevate U.S.-Japan cooperation in advanced science and technology. This innovative university-corporate partnership has become the model for long-term collaboration in transformative technologies.” — U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel

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Agriculture and Food

Agriculture can help reduce poverty, raise incomes and improve food security for 80% of the world's poor, who live in rural areas and work mainly in farming. The World Bank Group is a leading financier of agriculture.

Healthy, sustainable and inclusive food systems are critical to achieve the world’s development goals. Agricultural development is one of the most powerful tools to end extreme poverty, boost shared prosperity, and feed a projected  10 billion people by 2050 . Growth in the agriculture sector is  two to four times more effective  in raising incomes among the poorest compared to other sectors.

Agriculture is also crucial to economic growth: accounting for 4% of global gross domestic product (GDP) and in some least developing countries,  it can account for more than 25% of GDP .

But agriculture-driven growth, poverty reduction, and food security are at risk: Multiple shocks – from COVID-19 related disruptions to extreme weather, pests, and conflicts – are impacting food systems. The goal of ending global hunger by 2030 is currently off track. Conflicts, climate change, and high food prices are driving food and nutrition insecurity, pushing millions into extreme poverty, and reversing hard-won development gains. Around a quarter of a billion people now face acute food insecurity .

The growing impact of climate change could further cut crop yields, especially in the world’s most food-insecure regions. At the same time, our food systems are responsible for about 30% of greenhouse gas emissions.

Current food systems also threaten the health of people and the planet and generate unsustainable levels of pollution and waste. One third of food produced globally is either lost or wasted. Addressing food loss and waste is critical to improving food and nutrition security, as well as helping to meet climate goals and reduce stress on the environment.

Risks associated with poor diets are also  the leading cause of death worldwide . Millions of people are either not eating enough or eating the wrong types of food, resulting in a  double burden of malnutrition  that can lead to illnesses and health crises. Food insecurity can worsen diet quality and increase the risk of various forms of malnutrition, potentially leading to undernutrition as well as people being overweight and obese. An estimated 3 billion people in the world cannot afford a healthy diet.

Last Updated: Mar 15, 2024

The World Bank Group provides knowledge, advice, and financial resources in low- and middle-income countries to transform food systems to reduce poverty and achieve green, resilient, and inclusive development.

Our work in food and agriculture focuses on: 

• Food and nutrition security , where we work with efforts to share information, and to rapidly provide resources where they are needed, while helping countries design the long-term reforms needed to build resilient food and nutrition systems.
• Climate-smart agriculture by working with client governments to provide solutions that address global climate priorities, while recognizing national contexts and development objectives.
• Data-driven digital agriculture by expand the frontier of financing and expertise for digital agriculture.
• Mobilizing capital for development in agriculture & food . We identify and leverage growth areas for productive investments, focusing on innovation and impact. And we design projects to ensure that financing boosts sustainable productivity gains, reaches smallholders and SMEs, and creates jobs to end poverty and hunger.
• Public policy and expenditure by working with governments to facilitate the adoption of more sustainable approaches, technologies, and practices, alongside policies that promote public and private sector investment.
• Sustainable and health diets to ensure that food can support a healthy population.

For fiscal year 2024, a total of $2.98 billion in new IBRD/IDA commitments to agriculture and related sectors are being delivered. Around half of this investment will directly support climate action.

 As part of a comprehensive, global response to the food and nutrition crises, the World Bank is scaling up its responses , making $45 billion available in 90 countries. Our intervention is expected to benefit 335 million people, equivalent to 44% of the number of undernourished people. More than half of the beneficiaries are women, who are disproportionately affected by the crisis. It includes both short term interventions such as expanding social protection, also longer-term resilience such as boosting productivity and climate-smart agriculture. The World Bank has also included food and nutriton security as part of the global challenges that it will address at scale.

Increasingly, the Bank supports country efforts to transform their food systems by taking a holistic look at public policies and spending for agriculture and food. A Multi-Donor Trust Fund,  Food Systems 2030 , provides a platform for change in this area.

In Angola, a project  co-financed by the World Bank and the French Agency for Development, contributed to the government economic diversification agenda by supporting the transition from subsistence to a more market-oriented, competitive agriculture sector. The project is helping producers or small and medium enterprises prepare and finance agriculture investments. As of December 2023, 268 projects have been approved, equivalent to about $37 million in agriculture investment. The project funded the first partial credit guarantees scheme ever dedicated to the agriculture sector in Angola – an innovation for the country’s agribusiness sector – mobilizing so far $4.1 million in private bank financing. 

In  Argentina , the Bank supported 14,630 families who benefited from better socioeconomic inclusion. Under the project, 2,409 families accessed water for human and animal consumption, also irrigation; 7,499 rural families improved their productive capacity; and over 900 families accessed infrastructure, equipment and training that improved their marketing. Based on the model of productive alliances, 2,801 families from different regions became beneficiaries by linking their production with the markets. Among the funded activities, the production of honey, orchards, forage, livestock, nuts, spices, yerba mate and tea, among others, stand out.

In Benin, between 2011-2021, the Agricultural Productivity and Diversification Project facilitated the adoption of productivity-enhancing technologies for 327,503 crop producers, leading to 135,549 hectares of land cultivated with improved technologies. The project interventions resulted in increased yields from 0.45 ton to 0.81 ton for cashew; from 1.2 tons to 2.97 tons for maize, from 4 tons to 6.2 tons for rice, and from 50 tons to 70 tons for pineapple. The project led to significant increases of milled rice and fish output. Combined with support for crop production and processing, support to exports has led to increases in the export of cashew and pineapple.

For the past 18 years, Bolivia has been developing a strategy to improve agricultural production and marketing through the productive alliances model. This model links small rural producers with markets, and facilitates their participation in value chains, and access to technical assistance and technology for better market access. Currently, over 2,600 productive alliances have been implemented, benefiting 107,308 producer families. In 2023, the third phase of productive alliances model was launched, expecting to have a significant impact on nearly 130, 000 rural producer’s communities, with a focus on food security, adoption of innovative practices for resilient agriculture and the increased participation of women producers.

A Bank-supported project implemented in partnership with the Government of Rio Grande do Norte, one of Brazil's poorest and most violent states, has aimed to improve agricultural productivity, the quality of and access to health, public security, education and public sector management across the state. The project has implemented 131 subprojects in family farming, renovated 274km of roads, renovated and strengthened the safety of an important dam, and built 22 modern, multi-service Citizen Centers.

In Bhutan,  a project  is supporting the government's efforts to reduce rural poverty and malnutrition through climate-smart agriculture. Irrigation technology and greenhouses introduced through the project have helped farmers to increase their access to local and export markets. More than 6,500 people have increased the quality and quantity of produce like rice, maize, potato, vegetables, quinoa, citrus, apples, and potatoes, as well as high-value spices such as cardamom and ginger. 

In Burkina Faso, the Bank supported the Burkina Faso Livestock Sector Development Project which ran from 2017 to 2022. By project completion, beneficiaries among selected value chains increased their yield by 8.4%. Yield increase for cattle, sheep, and egg production reached 6.76%, 11.93%, and 6.50%, respectively. Sales increased by 45% exceeding the target of a 30% increase. The volume of loans granted by partner financial institutions reached $5.02 million, exceeding the original target of $4.38 million. The project reached a total of 329,000 beneficiaries, out of which 138,314 were women and 112,573 were youth.

In the Central African Republic, through the Emergency Food Security Response project, 330,000 smallholder farmers received seeds, farming tools, and training in agricultural and post-harvest techniques. The project helped farmers boost their crop production and become more resilient to climate and conflict risks. Local food production increased by 250%, from 28,000 tons in September 2022 to 73,000 tons in June 2023. Moreover, 21,006 agricultural households received training on post-harvest loss management and provided equipment, such as mobile storage units, to enhance packaging of agricultural products, leading to higher selling prices.

In  Colombia, since 2010, the adoption of environmentally friendly silvopastoral production systems  (SPS) for over 4,100 cattle ranches has converted 100,522 hectares of degraded pastures into more productive landscapes and captured 1,565,026 tons of CO2 equivalent. In addition, almost 40,000 hectares of pastureland were transformed to SPS and 4,640 hectares into intensive Silvopastoral Production Systems (iSPS). Moreover, 4,100 direct farmers beneficiaries, of which 17% were women, were trained in SPS and iSPS, and over 21,000 farmers, technicians and producers were also trained, visited demonstration farms, and participated in workshops and events and technology brigades. A network of 116 plant nurseries were also established, which produced around 3.1 million fodder trees that were delivered to beneficiary farmers. 

In Cote d’Ivoire, between 2013 and 2017, the Agriculture Sector Project  boosted the productivity of 200,000 farmers and rehabilitated 6,500 kilometers of rural roads allowing farmers to better transport their products  and reduce post-harvest losses. To aid the cashew industry, the Bank also supported a research program that helped disseminate 209 genotypes of high-performing trees and establish 18 nurseries. The Bank-financed project also helped leverage $27.5 million in private investment to boost productivity on at least 26,500 hectares.

In Ethiopia, since 2015 a project has helped 2.5 million smallholder farmers increase agricultural productivity and commercialization by establishing market linkages, increasing access to agricultural public services, building smallholder farmer capacity in efficient water and crop management to implement climate change mitigation and adaptation, and improving diet diversification. The project has also been promoting the use of nutrition sensitive agriculture and gender and climate-smart agriculture including dietary diversity through nutrient-dense crops, livestock products, post-harvest processing/handling and social behavioral change communication, along with food safety and child and maternal health. The project has supported farmers increase yield in crops and livestock by 19% and 52% respectively and their revenue by 96.2%. To date the project has also provided 58,823 hectares of land with irrigation and water related services, and over 1.6 million farmers have adopted improved agriculture technologies promoted by the project. Nearly one million jobs for rural people, including for women and youth in fragile and conflict affected areas have been created as a result of the project interventions.

In Grenada , the World Bank supported local farmers and fisherfolk, along with aggregators and agro-processors to enhance their access to markets and sales from 2017 to 2023 through the OECS Regional Agriculture Competitiveness Project. The project provided vouchers to 206 farmers and fisherfolk and offered co-financing opportunities for 10 agro-processors, leading to significant improvements in their production facilities and market access. Additionally, 260 employees and 53 extension workers received training, improving their skills in agricultural production and market reach. Through the project, 150 producers adopted various climate-smart technologies, such as solar panels and rainwater harvesting systems, underscoring the project's dedication to sustainability and efficiency.

In Guinea, from 2018 to 2023, through the  Guinea Integrated Agricultural Development Project , local farmers increased agriculture's productivity, and sustainability. To help local communities, the project disseminated high-yielding seeds, improve irrigation, and trained women and youth to access funds to create jobs. The project also promoted the use of climate-smart, gender-sensitive digital technologies with local producers. The project has reached 149,000 farmers (of whom 38% are women and 30% are youth). The project’s results include a 30% increase in yield of rice and maize; a 42% increase in commodity sales; a 47,470-hectare area covered by improved technologies; over 97,000 users of improved technologies, and more than 2,000 jobs created for women and youth.

In Haiti , a World Bank project strengthened the institutional capacity of Haiti’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development by accessing technologies to increase not only agricultural productivity and production but also improved livelihoods and resilience. The project developed irrigation and drainage on 2,244 hectares; established 115 farmer field schools, and trained facilitators in agricultural extension techniques. A total of 78,242 small producers increased their market access, half of whom were women; more than 3,368 private and public sector staff (including staff from the Ministry of Agriculture, municipal staff, among others) and 600 farmers were trained on surveillance and vaccination, the use of fruit fly traps, mealybugs control, and protection of animals against rabies and anthrax and more than 3.6 million animals were vaccinated.

In Honduras, since 2010 , 12,878 small farmers, of which 27% are women, have used productive alliances to improve productivity and access to markets, which has leveraged $33.5 million in finance from commercial banks and microfinance institutions. Under the project, gross sales of producer organizations rose by 25.3%. Also, support to Honduras’ Dry Corridor Alliance, has helped 12,202 households implement food security and agricultural business plans, and improved agricultural yields, nutrition, and food diversity of project beneficiaries.

In India, the  Assam Agribusiness and Rural Transformation Project  supported over 400,000 farm families and 1,270 businesses and over 100 of industry associations and producer organizations in improving their productivity and incomes and helping develop new marketing channels since 2017.

In  Kenya, since 2016,   1.5 million farmers , where over 60% are women, have increased their productivity , climate resilience and access to markets. The digital registry (including geo tagging) of these 1.5 million farmers enables them to access agro-weather and market advisories. In addition, the Bank is facilitating partnerships between the government and 26 ag-tech support agencies which enables almost 500,000 farmers to access a range of services (inputs, financial services and markets) by leveraging digital technologies.  

In Kosovo , the Bank provided 775 grants to farmers and 103 grants to agri-processors to increase production capacities and enhance market competitiveness in the livestock and horticulture sector. This was done through upgrading facilities, adopting new technologies, and introducing food safety and environmental standards. Further, support was provided for the rehabilitation of irrigation schemes covering an area of 7,750 hectares which had an impact on the production, yield, quality, and variety of products cultivated in the area.

In the Kyrgyz Republic, the Additional Financing to the Integrated Dairy Productivity Improvement Project is improving productivity through better technologies and breeds of dairy animals rather than increasing their numbers. The project provides training, artificial insemination services, and monitoring milk yields per cow and the quality of milk to processing companies. To date, 10,000 small farmers including 5,000 women farmers, have received training to enhance productivity and climate-smart agriculture. Over 13,000 cows received artificial insemination for breed improvement with positive pregnancy rate of 67.3% which is above the global average. With improved breeds of dairy animals, the market value of the crossbred calves is higher than local calves and the average milk yield per cow has increased by nearly 15%. The project has also established a digital tool to monitor milk quality which is being used by eight dairy processing companies. The project established 30 milk collection points through famers’ Jamaats that are equipped with refrigerated tanks and advanced testing equipment, strategically located to ensure consistent milk quality and timely delivery, especially during hot summers.

In Madagascar, since 2016 , the Bank has boosted the productivity of over 130,000 farmers. Sixty-thousand hectares of irrigated rice fields have been rehabilitated. The Bank also supported the cocoa sector through research, the development of certified seeds, and promotion of improved production and processing techniques. This allowed 4,000 cocoa producers to increase their incomes and increase production and export volumes by 50%. The Bank also financed the country’s largest land rights registration, facilitating the delivery of over 200,000 land certificates to farmers. 

In Mauritania, between 2016 and 2021, the intervention of the Sahel regional support project offered agricultural assets and services to more than 400,000 farmers/pastoralists, where nearly 30% are women. More than 1.9 million hectares of land under sustainable management practices, in addition to the construction of 133 vaccination parks and the realization of 118 water points (wells and boreholes) as well as other infrastructure of valorization and trade of animals were provided to agro-pastoralist communities. Additionally, from April 2023- June 2028, the Bank offered to support the  Agriculture Development and Innovation Support Project (PADISAM)  to improve land resources management and foster inclusive and sustainable commercial agriculture in selected areas of Mauritania. It is anticipated that by the end of the project, there will be 72,000 direct beneficiaries and about 5,000 Ha of land under sustainable landscape management practices.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting spikes in wheat prices in 2022, the World Bank provided emergency support to several countries in the Middle East and North Africa to mitigate the negative socio-economic consequences on the poor and vulnerable. These emergency projects secured access to affordable bread for over 89 million people across the region. In Lebanon, a project ($150 million) has been financing wheat imports that supports universal access to affordable Arabic bread for over a year to 5.36 million people living in Lebanon, of which 1 million are Syrian, Palestinian, and other refugees. In Egypt, a project helped procure around 1.15 million metric tons of wheat – equivalent to at least a 2-month supply to cover the needs of 72 million vulnerable people. A project in In Tunisia procured 160,099 metric tons of soft wheat, equivalent to seven weeks of bread supply for a population of 12 million.

In Moldova, since 2012 , the Bank has helped more than 7,500 farmers gain access to local and regional high-value markets for fresh fruit and vegetables and boosted land productivity through the promotion of sustainable land management practices on 120,000 hectares of farmland.

In  Montenegro , the bank, through the Second Institutional Development and Agriculture Strengthening (MIDAS2), helped the government launch the very first Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance for Agriculture and Rural Development (IPARD)-like agro-environmental measure in a manner compliant with EU requirements, increasing the amount of meadows and pasture lands recorded in the Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS) from 13,600 hectares (ha) to 92,000 ha. The Bank has also supported almost 4,000 farmers working on orchards, vineyards, livestock and aromatic plants, 224 agro-processors, and 59 farmers working on processing on-farm complying with the European Union requirements for food safety and 278 agricultural households adopting agro-environmental measures, improving their competitiveness and sustainability.

In Morocco , the Strengthening Agri-food Value Chains Program for Results has financed the construction of the first modern regional wholesale market in Rabat, which will improve the distribution of agricultural products throughout the region, benefiting more than 4.6 million inhabitants. The program also financed the establishment of the male sterile Ceratite production center, which will enable citrus producers in the Souss-Massa and Berkane regions, which represent 52% of national citrus production and generate about 6 million working days per year, to protect their production from damage caused by the Mediterranean fruit fly. The program also enabled more than 1,000 agri-food SMEs to obtain sanitary approval after upgrading, leading to an increase in employment by almost 61%. The program co-financed more than 70 units of packaging, cold storage and processing, which leveraged about US$86 million as private investment and led to an overall increase in production value of around 34%.

In Niger , through  the Climate Smart Agriculture Support Project , the World Bank supported over 370,000 farmers, where 145,000 of whom are women. The farmers benefited from the project’s investments in small and large-scale irrigation, improved climate-smart agriculture, and sustainable land management practices. Over 154,000 hectares of land were developed with sustainable land management practices, and 4,400 hectares of cropland were brought under irrigation. In collaboration with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics and FAO, the project promoted good agriculture practices through farmer led e-extension services and technical assistance. The project investments led to significant increases in agriculture productivity: yields of cowpea, millet, and sorghum increased by 169, 164, and 142 percent, respectively. The project also strengthened the national climate information system by building the capacity of the National Meteorology Department (the project installed 30 meteorological stations and 600 rain gauges). Through its support to the Sahel Regional Center for Hydro and Agrometeorology, the project strengthened the early warning systems of national institutes such as National Meteorology and the National Hydrology Directorate.

In Nigeria,  APPEALS Project   was designed to enhance agricultural productivity of small and medium scale farmers and improve value addition along priority value chains. Since 2017, the project has demonstrated 204 improved technologies to 93,0009 farmers. Food crop production has surged, with 304,516 metric tons produced, representing 3.1% of the national output. Furthermore, the project has reached 61,171 farmers with processing assets to improve the quality of their produce. The project also trained 10,346 women and youth, including persons with disability, providing them with business, technical and life skills training, support to business planning and facilitation of business name registration, start-up grant to establish a commercially viable business, and mentorship to provide the beneficiaries with continued support from established agribusiness entrepreneurs. The project linked farmers to market through the facilitation of commercial partnerships resulting in a total of 327 business alliances with 147 off-takers already buying farmers’ produce across the 11 value chains, with a transaction worth of US$ 59.7 million. Similarly, the project has linked 200 agribusiness clusters to infrastructures which includes 55km rural farm access road, 75 aggregation and cottage processing centers, 102 solar-powered water intervention and energy supplies.

In Paraguay, since 2008, 20,863 farmers  increased their agricultural income by at least 30% and 18,951 adopted improved agricultural practices, boosting the productivity of their land.

In the  Philippines, since 2015 , the Bank helped raise rural incomes, enhance farm and fishery productivity, improve market access and mainstream institutional and operational reforms, as well as science-based planning for agricultural commodities in 81 provinces. The project has benefitted a total of 323,501 people–46% of them women–with farm roads, irrigation, and agricultural enterprise projects, boosting incomes by up to 36%. 

In  Rwanda, since  2010, the Bank helped support over 410,000 farmers – half are women – in improving their agricultural production by developing over 7,400 hectares for marshland irrigation, providing hillside irrigation on over 2,500 hectares, and several hundreds of farmers benefitted matching grants to support their investments in Farmer-Led Irrigation Development (FLID) technologies on over 1,200 hectares of their land. Interventions also included improving soil conservation and erosion on more than 39,000 hectares of hillside. Maize, rice, beans, and potato yields have all more than doubled and around 2.5 tons of vegetables are exported to Europe and the Middle-East every week from intervention areas, or locally, where more horticulture produce is sold to premium markets including 5-star hotels or the national airline, RwandAir. Less than two years after  one of the Bank supported projects  introduced greenhouse farming in its intervention areas to minimize the impacts of unfavorable weather conditions and better manage crop pests and diseases, by 2023, the demand for these technologies has seen a rapid increase in these areas and 132 units have been acquired and installed through the matching grants program under the project. Evidence shows relatively high revenues for farmers investing in greenhouse technology, with revenues increasing up to 15 times for vegetable growers.

Since 2019, the ongoing Serbia Competitive Agriculture Project has been supporting the government economic diversification and competitiveness agenda for small and medium scale farmers and their participation in a more market-oriented agriculture sector. The productive alliance model supported by the project has contributed to the improvement of the agri-food market linkages of 823 farmers, of which 330 are women farmers. Through the project, 4,356 farmers have received technical assistance to prepare their business ideas and plans (1,307 are women), while 1,319 business plans have received support in various forms, such as matching grants, technical assistance, and business development support. The farmers have signed their loans with commercial banks to invest in farm innovations, including equipment, on-farm irrigation, digital agriculture, climate-smart agriculture technologies. By providing co-financing with EUR 24.17 million in matching grants, the project-supported business plans have leveraged an additional EUR 24.17 million in private capital so far, including commercial loans to farmers at market interest rate from 11 local banks, and cash contributions from the beneficiary farmers. Amongst them, 1,117 beneficiary farmers are first-time users of credit.

In  Tajikistan , the Bank supported the establishment of 545 farmer groups in horticulture value chains, specifically apricot, apple, pear, lemon, cucumber, and tomato, and dairy value chain benefiting a total of 13,516 farmers out of which 48% were women. The Bank also supported the establishment of 342 productive partnerships benefitting 4,340 smallholder farmers. A total of 21,882 beneficiaries achieved an increase in commercial activity. The project supported training for 13, 516 farmers, on value chain development.

In  Tunisia, the Bank helped 113 remote rural villages improve  land management practices on 37,000 hectares of land to increase productivity and improve 930 kilometers of rural roads serving some 160 villages. 

In  Uruguay, since 2014, climate-smart agriculture techniques  have been adopted on 2.7 million hectares and adopted by 5,541 farmers, providing for a carbon sequestration potential of up to 9 million tons of CO2 annually.

In Uganda, since 2015 , the  Agriculture Cluster Development Project’s e-voucher scheme has leveraged over $12 million of farmer investments enabling over 450,000 farm households access and use improved agro-inputs resulting in higher farm yields. Provision of matching grants has enhanced storage capacity by 55,000MT, acquiring value addition equipment and machinery thereby facilitating Producer Organizations to add value and undertake collective marketing. Additional infrastructure support addressing road chokes has also led to improved market access.

The Bank has also made investments into strengthening regulatory and administrative functions of the Ministry of Agriculture through the development of IT Platforms and tools facilitating timely planning and decision making.

In the Uganda Multi-Sectoral Food and Nutrition Security Project, the Bank has supported enhanced knowledge on nutrition resulting in improved household nutrition and incomes for 1.55 million direct project beneficiaries.

In Uzbekistan, the Horticulture Development Project has helped create, 34,520 jobs, including 13,124 for women; increase beneficiary productivity by 24% and profitability by 124%, including through entry into new export markets. The  Livestock Sector Development Project  supported a sub-loans benefitting 560 large scale commercial livestock farmers, and a total of 135 value chain development projects benefiting 1,456 smallholder farmers (Dekhans). As a result, the share of improved and high yielding livestock breeds increased by 98.7%; increasing milk and meat productivity by 33% and 38% respectively. The Ferghana Valley Rural Enterprise Project has supported the establishment and operation of nine business incubation hubs in Andijan, Namangan, and Ferghana regions, to support local entrepreneurs in business plan preparation, and facilitated access to finance, technology infusion, also organized training among 5,000 project initiators in 36 districts of Ferghana Valley. The project, under its credit line activities, financed a total of 501 investment sub-projects with $119.6 million of the project fund, of which 77.8% were for small business entrepreneurs This created substantial number of new jobs, and increased the incomes of rural enterprises,

In Vietnam, since 2010, the Bank has promoted sustainable livelihoods by helping develop 9,000 “common interest groups” comprising over 15,500 households and partnering them with agricultural enterprises. The Bank also helped  over 20,000 farmers  improve their livestock production and benefited an additional 130,000 people through capacity building in food safety. 

Under the  West African Agricultural Productivity Program , the Bank supported a research and development effort that promoted technology generation, dissemination, and support to local farming systems in 13  ECOWAS  countries. The project reached over 2.7 million beneficiaries, 41% of whom were women. It also generated 112 technologies that reached over 1,850,000 hectares.

The Yemen Food Security Response and Resilience Project has directly benefited over 1 million beneficiaries to date. The project is focusing on resilience building amidst protracted crisis – including conflict, insecurity, and climate-related shocks. The project has created around 20,000 short-term jobs and benefited over 50,000 smallholder farm households through various agricultural infrastructure improvements. The project invested in the vaccination of 11 million small ruminants and treated a similar number for parasites. In addition to building resilience, as a short-term response, the project supported 20,000 vulnerable households with kitchen gardens and livestock kits, business development training and start-up grants to vulnerable women. Furthermore, the project facilitated a supplemental feeding program for over 740,000 most vulnerable beneficiaries.

Last Updated: Apr 09, 2024

The World Bank works with a range of partners to achieve ambitious development goals: transforming food systems, boosting food security and empowering smallholder farmers, to realize zero hunger and poverty by 2030. 

The World Bank Group is a joint convener, with the G7 Presidency, of the Global Alliance for Food Security (GAFS) . A key outcome of the Global Alliance is the  Global Food and Nutrition Security Dashboard , a key tool to fast-track a rapid response to the unfolding global food security crisis, designed to consolidate and present up-to-date data on food crisis severity, track global food security financing, and make available global and country-level research and analysis to improve coordination of the policy and financial response to the crisis.

The Bank hosts a  Multi-Donor Trust Fund,  Food Systems 2030 , that helps countries build better food systems, fostering healthy people, a healthy planet and healthy economies. The Trust Fund aims to deliver improved livelihoods and affordable, and nutritious diets for all, and progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals of zero poverty and hunger by 2030 and the climate goals of the Paris Agreement. Food Systems 2030 provides advice and analytical products to underpin policy options, funds to pilot innovative approaches, and information to build support for change in different country contexts. It engages with the private sector by supporting the design, piloting and de-risking of innovative public-private partnerships that advance development and climate goals.   

The  Global Agriculture and Food Security Program , a multilateral financing platform, is dedicated to improving food and nutrition security worldwide. Launched by the  G20 in the wake of the global response to the 2007–08 food price crisis, GAFSP works to build sustainable and resilient agriculture and food systems in the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries. Since its inception in 2010, the Program has mobilized more than US$2 billion in donor funds to reach more than 16.6 million people. GAFSP provides financial and technical resources – investment grants, technical assistance, concessional finance, and advisory services – to demand-driven projects along the food chain to accelerate the transformation of food systems at scale.

The World Bank leads the  Food Systems, Land use and Restoration Global Platform (FOLUR) , financed by the Global Environment Facility, in partnership with UNDP, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Global Landscapes Forum and the Food and Land-use Coalition. FOLUR is a $345 million, seven-year program that aims to improve the health and sustainability of landscapes that produce the world’s food. FOLUR targets sustainable production landscapes in 27 country projects for eight major commodities (livestock, cocoa, coffee, maize, palm oil, rice, soy, and wheat).

The World Bank chairs the System Council of  CGIAR , a global partnership that advances cutting-edge science to reduce rural poverty, increase food security, improve human health and nutrition, and ensure sustainable management of natural resources.

For more information, contact Clare Murphy-McGreevey on [email protected].

Last Updated: Sep 19, 2023

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CGIAR advances cutting-edge science to reduce rural poverty, increase food security, improve human health and nutrition, and ensure the sustainable management of natural resources.

Food Systems 2030

Food Systems 2030 is an Umbrella Multi-Donor Trust Fund that helps countries build better food systems by 2030. Food Systems 2030 helps countries rethink and transform their food systems from farm to fork, progressing ...

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The Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) finances investments that increase incomes and improve food and nutrition security in developing countries.

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Articles on Sustainable development

Displaying 1 - 20 of 148 articles.

Ghanaians love rice – how smallholder farmers could harvest more of it with the help of machines

Selorm Yaotse Dorvlo , University of Ghana

What ancient farmers can really teach us about adapting to climate change – and how political power influences success or failure

Chelsea Fisher , University of South Carolina

Migrants can be a transformative force for sustainable development

Sonja Fransen , United Nations University ; Neil Adger , University of Exeter ; Ricardo Safra de Campos , University of Exeter , and William C. Clark , Harvard University

Annual rankings don’t always tell us what it’s really like to live in a city

Georges A. Tanguay , Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and Juste Rajaonson , Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

Global university rankings now include social impact: African universities are off to a strong start

Annika Surmeier , University of Cape Town ; Alex Bignotti , University of Pretoria ; Bob Doherty , University of York ; David Littlewood , University of Sheffield ; Diane Holt , University of Leeds ; Phyllis Awor , Makerere University ; Ralph Hamann , University of Cape Town , and Teddy Ossei Kwakye , University of Ghana

Building on the greenbelt is central to solving the housing crisis – just look at how the edges of cities have changed

Cameron McEwan , Northumbria University, Newcastle and Andreas Lechner , Graz University of Technology

Nigeria’s new blue economy ministry could harness marine resources - moving the focus away from oil

Isa Olalekan Elegbede , Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg

Well behind at halftime: here’s how to get the UN Sustainable Development Goals back on track

Cameron Allen , Monash University and Shirin Malekpour , Monash University

The US committed to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, but like other countries, it’s struggling to make progress

Scott Schang , Wake Forest University and John Dernbach , Widener University

Using green banks to solve America’s affordable housing crisis – and climate change at the same time

Tarun Gopalakrishnan , Tufts University ; Bethany Tietjen , Tufts University , and Seth Owusu-Mante , Tufts University

Is it possible to measure sustainable development?

Patrick Faubert , Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC) ; Claude Villeneuve , Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC) , and David Tremblay , Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC)

Investing in employee ownership could help the Canadian government meet its sustainability goals

Lorin Busaan , University of Victoria and Simon Pek , University of Victoria

Can this former CEO fix the World Bank and solve the world’s climate finance and debt crises as the institution’s next president?

Rachel Kyte , Tufts University

The Rideau Canal Skateway: How can we promote resilience in the face of a changing climate?

Shawn Kenny , Carleton University

Leveraging digital platforms for public good: Stories of positive impact from India

Suchit Ahuja , Concordia University and Yolande E. Chan , McGill University

Get the basics right for National Environmental Standards to ensure truly sustainable development

Peter Burnett , Australian National University

A new UN report offers businesses a template for achieving true sustainability

Sofiane Baba , Université de Sherbrooke

What is Mondiacult? 6 take-aways from the world’s biggest cultural policy gathering

Ribio Nzeza Bunketi Buse , University of Kinshasa

Australia is poised to be a world leader in offshore wind, but any potential risks to marine life remain poorly regulated

Madeline Taylor , Macquarie University

Indonesia’s COVID-19 recovery plan relies on dirty energy, making it harder to hit environmental targets

Denny Gunawan , UNSW Sydney

Related Topics

• Agriculture
• Cities & Policy
• Climate change
• Global perspectives
• Sustainability
• United Nations
• UN sustainable development goals (SDG)
• Urban planning

Top contributors

Distinguished Research Professor and Australian Laureate, James Cook University

Emeritus Professor of Urban & Regional Planning, University of Canberra

Research Fellow, Monash University

Associate Professor in Architectural Engineering, Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain)

Professor of Environmental Geography, School of Biological Earth and Environmental Sciences, UNSW Sydney, UNSW Sydney

Senior Lecturer, School of Public Health, The University of Queensland

Research Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Emeritus Professor, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University

Director, Monash Sustainable Development Institute, Monash University

Assistant Director (International) - Melbourne Centre for Cities, The University of Melbourne

Professor of Sustainability Research, UNSW Sydney

Distinguished Professor of Energy and the Environment, University of Delaware (USA); Honorary Professor, The University of Queensland

Professor of Global Change and Sustainability Research Institute and School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand

Clinical Senior Research Associate, MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge

Academic Director, School for International Training, The University of Melbourne

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Advancing ‘Ahead of Ready’ with Next Generation Interceptor

Image above: Notional render of Lockheed Martin’s Next Generation Interceptor solution.  

The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has selected Lockheed Martin to deliver the Next Generation Interceptor (NGI) – the nation’s new homeland missile defense capability.

NGI is part of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system and will provide a new, advanced interceptor for the mission to protect the homeland against limited long range ballistic missile threats from rogue nations. And our mature and reliable interceptor solution will help the warfighter stay ahead of these evolving threats.

“Lockheed Martin is proud to partner with the MDA on a revolutionary interceptor to advance our nation’s security. We are committed to delivering reliable interceptors that will seamlessly integrate with the current GMD system and can rapidly evolve with the threat,” said Sarah Hiza, vice president and general manager of Strategic and Missile Defense at Lockheed Martin.

Our Path to Development

In 2019, MDA announced the NGI competition to replace the current, aging ballistic missile defense interceptor.

Lockheed Martin was selected by the MDA in March 2021 to compete in the development phase of the NGI acquisition program.

In October 2021, the MDA approved Lockheed Martin’s NGI System Requirements Review (SRR)-- six months after the initial contract award.

By August 2022, we announced that our NGI program team validated prototype communications technology for in-flight situational awareness and, later that year, delivered NGI’s first flight software package ahead of schedule.

One year later, in August 2023, a series of subsystem Preliminary Design Reviews (PDR) validated the design for all elements of our NGI solution.

On September 29, 2023, our NGI program completed an All Up Round PDR , in partnership with the MDA, which assessed the program’s readiness and maturity to continue into the detailed design phase.

In November of 2023, we opened a $16.5M engineering facility in North Alabama where development, testing and system integration for NGI is taking place.

By November 2023, we also completed Knowledge Point 1 ahead of schedule – an MDA acquisition milestone demonstrating significant maturation across critical technologies and manufacturing readiness and transitioning the program into its product development phase.

Digital Enablement

With our NGI solution, we have built in efficiencies, upgradability, and sustainability so the warfighter can stay ahead of ready.

Since the program’s inception, the company’s embrace and integration of digital tools, processes, and technologies is an enabler to meet our customers’ production needs today and well into the future. All-digital development establishes a common digital thread – a foundation to enable accelerated testing, improve production processes, and more.

Automated mobility in Europe: where are we now?

Automation in road transport is at the forefront of the European Commission's agenda, aligning with key policy objectives such as the greening and digitalisation of the transport sector. Cooperative, connected, and automated mobility (CCAM) plays a central role in this transition, promising safer and more inclusive road transportation, while enhancing the competitiveness of European industries. The European Commission, through Horizon Europe, invests EUR 500 million in a public-private partnership on CCAM, which has been topped up by the private members by the same amount. Since 2021, EUR 159 million have been invested in research and innovation (R&I) activities to support 19 European projects to deliver on CCAM.

The mobility landscape is experiencing a surge in clean, connected, cooperative, and automated vehicles, driven by the pressing need to improve road safety and curb greenhouse gas emissions. This trend is characterised by the growing adoption of electric and hybrid vehicles for their environmental benefits, alongside advancements in connectivity that bolster safety and efficiency through real-time data exchange between vehicles and surrounding infrastructure. With the rapid evolution of automation and self-driving technologies that prioritise safety, accessibility, and reliability, the future of mobility is steering toward cleaner, more sustainable, user-centric, and smarter transportation solutions.

While the European automotive sector commands a significant share of R&D investment and employment, challenges stemming from electrification and digitalisation are also pushing the EU to maintain its leadership position amidst global competition. Today, we are seeing a progressive introduction of CCAM solutions, such as automated functions in passenger cars, shuttles, logistics operations, and last-mile delivery services, commercially available in Europe. Together with clean technologies, these solutions integrate existing transport ecosystems and are complemented by investments in smart mobility infrastructure, fostering growth in new business models. The development of CCAM is thus providing crucial opportunities to support the evolution of the automotive industry, and beyond.

In the 2016 Amsterdam Declaration, Member States urged the Commission to support the transition towards automation in road transportation with a comprehensive strategy at the EU level. Responding to this call, the Commission published in 2018 the Communication "On the road to automated mobility: An EU strategy for mobility of the future" . It outlined a set of objectives to position Europe as a global leader in CCAM across transport modes in subsequent years. The main recommendation of the Communication revolved around the need to coordinate EU instruments at research and regulatory level, alongside private sector engagements and funding programmes within Member States, to accelerate the transformation towards a safer, more resilient, and efficient transport sector capable of meeting diverse population needs.

Since 2018, numerous EU initiatives have been implemented. This Staff Working Document (SWD) highlights 10 achievements that are bringing Europe closer to deploying CCAM. While the publication emphasises a strong R&I footprint, the scope of these 10 achievements is broad, covering regulatory, financing, and policy actions, technical standards, infrastructure adaptation, as well as data and connectivity initiatives.

 This SWD presents a unified European vision that enables a progressive and seamless transition to CCAM, from research to widespread deployment, towards a multimodal, shared, sustainable, inclusive, affordable and safe transport sector. Several R&I success stories are highlighted throughout, demonstrating the impact of EU investment in CCAM, with a total of EUR 1 billion allocated for the duration of Horizon Europe.

More information

Staff Working Document on CCAM in Europe

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Environmental justice and education: How schools can help foster a sustainable future

Climate change conference brought together artists, activists, public officials, school board members, higher education leadership, district administrators and teachers to share their commitment to sustaining the environment.

On April 4, USC Rossier and Bio Equity Ed , a community-based non-profit in Los Angeles, hosted a conference on “Climate Change and Environmental Justice: The Role of Schools in Planning for a Sustainable Future.” Artists, activists, public officials, school board members, higher education leadership, district administrators and teachers convened by the dozens in the LEED-certified building of the California Endowment. Panelists and conferencegoers alike shared their commitments to transforming communities and building alliances, to sustain just and meaningful change in the face of our changing climate.

In her opening remarks, Veda Ramsay-Stamps EdD ’23 , USC Rossier alumna and founder of Bio Equity Ed, described how disconnected communities of color in most urban areas feel from nature, owing to historic injustices. She recounted the stories of Black and Brown students in Los Angeles, those who grow up miles from idyllic beaches and mountains but who know only the concrete beneath the nearest river and their feet. Artist Lauren Bon then described her work to bend and regenerate the L.A. River, providing water to the Los Angeles State Historic Park, which had once been a trainyard.

As Dean Pedro Noguera told the audience in his introduction: “Every problem facing the world today is an educational challenge. We have to learn what we need to do. And if we think of the climate crisis this way, as an educational challenge, the problem itself becomes less despairing.” Dean Noguera urged those in attendance not only to meet but to act, not merely to educate others to be resilient in the face of climate change but to inspire its solutions.

In breakout sessions, Distinguished Professor Gale Sinatra moderated a discussion with Imogen Herrick  PhD ’23, a USC Rossier alumna now at the University of Kansas, and Paula Carbone , USC Rossier professor of clinical education. They described successful pedagogical approaches to inspiring students into climate action, integrating students’ own identities and experiences. USC Rossier Professor Tracy Poon Tambascia spoke with researchers and architects about how to transform schools and schoolyards into biophilic environments. Community organizers and non-profit leaders shared their experiences greening urban environments with trees and micro-farms, especially in convincing schools to plant more gardens. Teachers and administrators from California’s climate-sensitive Central Valley described their fleets of electric school buses and innovative sustainability programs and curriculum to move students of color.

The conference’s keynote speaker, University of California, Merced Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz  outlined his university’s foundational commitment to sustainability in the Central Valley. At UC Merced, which was already the first research university in the United States to be carbon-neutral, Chancellor Muñoz is helping construct a center for sustainable agriculture, a model for what higher education can contribute to environmental sustainability and surrounding communities.

In an especially rousing plenary session, Stephen Ritz , a high school teacher from the South Bronx, described how he had turned his classroom and his school, in one of the most economically and environmentally deprived communities in the United States, into a vegetable garden. Ritz the subject of an upcoming documentary called Generation Growth , has not only shared his plant-based curriculum with governments and classrooms around the world, through his Green Bronx Machine non-profit, he turned the very conference room in which he spoke into an organic, immersive experience with greenery.

Naomi Riley, representing Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove of California’s 37th District, who had directed millions of dollars to sustainability projects, told those in attendance early in the day, “the folks closest to the problem are usually closest to the solution.” Most often, no one is closer to the problems in our communities than the teachers and administrators of local schools. It is they, as Noguera said, who “must begin to think creatively and critically to address climate change and give hope to kids who believe there is no future.”

• Pedro Noguera
• Distinguished Professor of Education
• Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean

• Gale M. Sinatra
• Stephen H. Crocker Chair
• Professor of Education and Psychology
• Associate Dean for Research

Tracy Poon Tambascia

• Professor of Higher Education
• Veronica and David Hagen Chair in Women’s Leadership

Article Type

Article topics.

• Climate change

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