Introduction
While fertilizers, genetically modified crops, and biotechnology have brought substantial benefits for farmers in recent decades, the accelerated application of smart, digital, and precision agricultural technologies offers a historic opportunity to improve farm productivity going forward. Such technologies are wide-ranging, including small mobile applications for decision support, field sensors and remote sensing technologies for data collection, drones and robots for automation of processes, and digital platforms for market access and sales. Use of these technologies helps address information asymmetries and deficiencies facing farmers, particularly smallholders, which can…
Frontier Technology Issues: Frontier technologies for smallholder farmers: addressing information asymmetries and deficiencies
The COVID-19 pandemic has renewed the global awareness that we are all in this together. The pandemic has set back progress on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but it has also made it possible for the international community to see the pursuit of sustainable development in a new light, and to learn from both successes and challenges of the pandemic to reinvigorate efforts towards achieving the SDGs.
The Sustainable Development Outlook 2021 charts a way forward for the world community to achieve the SDGs, despite the setback caused by COVID-19. In doing so, it focuses on SDG 1 (poverty), SDG 2 (hunger), SDG 3 (health and well-being), SDG 8 (growth and employment), SDG 10 (…
Sustainable Development Outlook 2021: From anguish to determination
Download Frontier Technology Issues: Lithium-ion batteries: a pillar for a fossil fuel-free economy? (PDF)
Introduction
In 2019, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to three scientists for the development of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries that, according to the Academy, have laid the foundation for a fossil fuel-free economy. Li-ion batteries can safely store large amounts of energy, ensuring stable and predictable flows of electricity even in decentralized immobile (i.e., stationary) or mobile modes in remote areas. The increasing popularity of passenger electric vehicles and electric buses is largely a result of the capacity improvement of Li-ion…
Frontier Technology Issues: Lithium-ion batteries: a pillar for a fossil fuel-free economy?
Welcome to the United Nations
