Agriculture and the Environment

Since 1990, Burness Communications has teamed up with gifted researchers, nonprofits and world leaders to promote strategies to ensure the global food supply, protect forests, and build consensus around the causes and impact of global climate change.  

When nearly one in four people worldwide live on less than $1 per day and one in 12 is malnourished, alerting policymakers and farmers about new approaches to hunger is a crucial first step towards a healthier, well-fed world. 

When deforestation contributes nearly one-fifth of greenhouse gas emissions and the illegal trade in timber uproots families from their homes, driving conflict and wars, the voices of local communities and advocates need to be heard.

When the loss of local crop varieties that have defined cultures for generations and yielded harvests of plenty leaves farmers unprepared for new threats like climate change, new pests and diseases, action and advocacy to rescue and preserve crop varieties are imperative.

And when urban expansion and drought drive livestock and the herders who keep them into a perpetual cycle of hunger, illness, and poverty, their story must be told.

   

From the halls of a futuristic seed vault deep inside a mountain in the Arctic Circle to the green rainforests of the Congo Basin and the rolling farmlands of the East Africa's Great Rift Valley, Burness has been there, advancing our clients’ work with the hope of building a more equitable and sustainable world.

We have collaborated with our clients to:

     
  • Advance efforts to highlight the important role that new crop varieties, improved farming practices, and supportive policies play in ending hunger in Africa
  • Highlight new research from the world's leading agricultural scientists on issues ranging from the threat of stem rust in wheat to water scarcity to low-cost tools that help poor farmers detect deadly diseases in their crops
  • Ensure a sustainable world food supply by conserving crop diversity
  • Advocate for policies that support the role of forests in fighting climate change and benefit over 1 billion poor people who depend on forests
  • Position agriculture, rural development, and forests as key issues at the key UN climate conferences in Bali, Poznan and Copenhagen.

African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD)

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Established in 2008, African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) is a project of the Gender & Diversity Program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). It was launched following a successful three-year pilot program in East Africa with support from the Rockefeller Foundation from 2005-2008.
AWARD offers tailored, two-year fellowships designed to fast-track the careers of African women scientists and professionals delivering pro-poor agricultural research and development that benefits rural communities, especially women.

The Forest Trust

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Established in 1999, The Forest Trust (formerly Tropical Forest Trust) is a non-profit international organisation seeking to address the problem of deforestation by working with companies and communities and help them trade Forest Responsible Products.
TFT does that by working in supply chains to set up traceability systems and assist producers towards sustainable forest management.

Honoring environmental research that could change the world

by Carol Schadelbauer on Fri, 05/14/2010 - 11:11am

Wildlife authorities and environmentalists waited warily, and wearily, as a huge oil spill took aim last Thursday at Louisiana's ecologically fragile coast…Forecasts showed the spill making a beeline for the pristine barrier islands of Breton National Wildlife Refuge, home to the brown pelican, which faces a new threat less than six months after it was removed from the endangered species list. Houston Chronicle, 4.29.2010

Conservationists are constantly confronting new threats to the species they protect.  And whether it is an oil spill creeping closer to pelican nesting grounds, deforestation threatening Golden Lion Tamarin Monkeys, or Kenyan farmers shooting cheetahs, a few fundamental questions remain: How can humans and endangered species coexist peacefully?  What causes extinction in the first place – and how can we predict which species will be next?

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A new roadmap for agricultural research

by Megan Dold on Tue, 04/13/2010 - 11:03am

 “Today, 1.4 billion people around the world live in extreme poverty.  Many of them are women and children.  Most of them are farmers.”

That’s World Bank President Robert Zoellick in a video address two weeks ago to the Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD), an unprecedented gathering in Montpellier, France that brought together researchers, policymakers, farmers, donors, and members of civil society from every region of the world. 

The goal?  Create a new framework for getting cutting-edge agricultural research to the farmers who need it to feed themselves, their families and their countries.  

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The Scientific Consulting Group

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The Scientific Consulting Group, Inc. (SCG) is a small women-owned business that provides professional consulting services to government and private clients in two major business areas: Environmental Consulting and Health and Biomedical Consulting.

www.scgcorp.com/

Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture

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The operational strategy of the Syngenta Foundation can be summarized in three words: smallholders, productivity and markets. The Foundation supports partners who work in agriculture in resource-poor settings in developing countries and emerging markets. The purpose is to help small farmers become more professional growers by extending science-based know-how, facilitating access to quality inputs, and linking them to markets in profitable ways. Small farmers are the key group requiring attention in agricultural and rural development.

International Water Management Institute

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IWMI is one of 15 international research centers supported by the network of 60 governments, private foundations and international and regional organizations collectively known as the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). It is a non-profit organization with a staff of 350 and offices in over 10 countries across Asia and Africa and Headquarters in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

www.iwmi.cgiar.org/index.aspx

International Institute of Tropical Agriculture

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Africa has complex problems that plague agriculture and people’s lives. We develop agricultural solutions with our partners to tackle hunger and poverty. Our award winning research-for-development (R4D) is based on focused, authoritative thinking anchored on the development needs of sub-Saharan Africa. We work with partners in Africa and beyond to reduce producer and consumer risks, enhance crop quality and productivity, and generate wealth from agriculture.

Global Crop Diversity Trust

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Important collections of crop diversity face urgent and chronic funding shortages. These shortages can lead to loss of diversity, the very building blocks on which adaptive and productive agriculture depends. The sole global response to this threat is the Global Crop Diversity Trust.

The Trust is a unique public-private partnership raising funds from individual, corporate and government donors to establish an endowment fund that will provide complete and continuous funding for key crop collections, in eternity.

American Geophysical Union

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The American Geophysical Union (AGU), which was established in 1919 by the National Research Council and for more than 50 years operated as an unincorporated affiliate of the National Academy of Sciences, is now a nonprofit corporation chartered under the laws of the District of Columbia. The Union is dedicated to the furtherance of the geophysical sciences through the individual efforts of its members and in cooperation with other national and international scientific organizations.

www.agu.org/