An urgent need for COP27: confronting converging crises

The last 12 months have provided further evidence of the potential for cascading ecological and socio-political crises that were warned of 12 months ago. Then a consensus statement from the Regional Action on Climate Change Symposium warned: "the Earth's climatic, ecological, and human systems are converging towards a crisis that threatens to engulf global civilization within the lifetimes of children now living." Since then, the consequences of a broad set of extreme climate events (notably droughts, floods, and fires) have been compounded by interaction with impacts from multiple pandemics (including COVID-19 and cholera) and the Russia-Ukraine war. As a result, new connections are becoming visible between climate change and human health, large vulnerable populations are experiencing food crises, climate refugees are on the move, and the risks of water, food, and climate disruption have been visibly converging and compounding. Many vulnerable populations now face serious challenges to adapt. In light of these trends, this year, RACC identifies a range of measures to be taken at global and regional levels to bolster the resilience of these populations in the face of such emerging crises. In particular, at all scales, there is a need for globally available local data, reliable analytic techniques, community capacity to plan adaptation strategies, and the resources (scientific, technical, cultural, and economic) to implement them. To date, the rate of growth of the support for climate change resilience lags behind the rapid growth of cascading and converging risks. As an urgent message to COP27, it is proposed that the time is now right to devote much greater emphasis, global funding, and support to the increasing adaptation needs of vulnerable populations.

Safeguarding people living in vulnerable conditions in the COVID-19 era through universal health coverage and social protection

The COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented. The pandemic not only induced a public health crisis, but has led to severe economic, social, and educational crises. Across economies and societies, the distributional consequences of the pandemic have been uneven. Among groups living in vulnerable conditions, the pandemic substantially magnified the inequality gaps, with possible negative implications for these individuals' long-term physical, socioeconomic, and mental wellbeing. This Viewpoint proposes priority, programmatic, and policy recommendations that governments, resource partners, and relevant stakeholders should consider in formulating medium-term to long-term strategies for preventing the spread of COVID-19, addressing the virus's impacts, and decreasing health inequalities. The world is at a never more crucial moment, requiring collaboration and cooperation from all sectors to mitigate the inequality gaps and improve people's health and wellbeing with universal health coverage and social protection, in addition to implementation of the health in all policies approach.

Beyond 2020: converging crises demand integrated responses: Statement by the RACC International Advisory Committee following the RACC-12 International Forum

The COVID-19 pandemic illustrates how the impacts of climate change are beginning to converge with other developing challenges with a likely peak with global population, requiring more integrated responses locally, regionally and globally.

Building tomorrow’s library today

The New Library of Alexandria performs a unique 21st century role as a library, a museum, an art gallery, an archive, an academy, a conference center, a science center, a university, and a special school. By blending today’s information and communications technology with yesterday’s rich cultural heritage and national memory, the Library of Alexandria has shown that innovation from the top down preserves the past and guarantees a future.

The values of science

In Egypt and Tunisia, ordinary citizens have toppled autocrats; elsewhere in the Arab World, they still battle dictators, armed with little more than their belief in freedom, human rights, and democracy. What sort of society comes after the revolution? Many fear that the idealism of the revolutionary democrats will only pave the way for theological autocrats who preach an intolerant doctrine. But fighting extremism is best done not by censorship or autocracy but by embracing pluralism and defeating ideas with ideas. And here, science has much to say, particularly about the values that are needed for societies to be truly open and democratic, because these are the values of science.

Multilayer and multimetric quality control: the Supercourse

Cancer-related presentations are rapidly communicated through thousands of Websites, chat rooms, newsgroups, list servers, newsletters, YouTube, and e-mails, with no specific attention to the validity of the reported findings. Quality control (QC) of cancer education lectures on the Web is an important concern, just like the quality assessment of all information found on the Web. This paper discusses the Supercourse, a global library of 3,600 online lectures available at www.pitt.edu/~super1 and several alternative quality control approaches that are being developed as part of this global effort. Peer review may not be optimal for the review of online lectures because it is labor-intensive and has low throughput. To our knowledge, we are among the first to begin a multilayer and multimetric evaluation approach toward QC (MQC) of PowerPoint lectures on the Web. We hope that future scientific research on peer review as well as on emerging multilayer QC methodologies will help us to determine best measures of QC, especially in the field of rapidly developing cancer education.

From vision to action after the second world water forum

The World Commission for Water in the 21st Century set out the vision of a "water secure world" and suggested a comprehensive set of measures to achieve this aim. Criticism of the role of water pricing in these measures underestimates the strength of its case in environmental, financial, economic, social, political and ethical terms. The Framework For Action has been devised as a guide for local action, but the proposal for a Water Innovation Fund may have particular impact.

Biotechnology and food security in the 21st century

Biotechnology can contribute to future food security if it benefits sustainable small-farm agriculture in developing countries. Presently, agrobiotechnology research cites ethical, safety, and intellectual property rights issues. Protection of intellectual property rights encourages private sector investment in agrobiotechnology, but in developing countries the needs of smallholder farmers and environmental conservation are unlikely to attract private funds. Public investment will be needed, and new and imaginative public-private collaboration can make the gene revolution beneficial to developing countries. This is crucial for the well-being of today's hungry people and future generations.