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 NERC would welcome ideas from both researchers and those who use environmental science research. For more information please click here.Ideas for highlight topics should be submitted by 15 May 2018.If you have any queries, please contact idea@nerc.ac.uk.

 Nature Sustainability aims to transcend disciplinary constraints to highlight relationships, problems, policies and potential solutions. In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development published its iconic report Our Common Future, also known as the Brundtland report (http://go.nature.com/2kxZARA), recognizing the key ideas uniting su…

 Early in the 20th Century, the world’s deadliest and most prolific killer was identified – the mosquito responsible for spreading malaria, Anopholes gambiae. Almost half a century later, in the country that gave this killer its name, work began on a research unit near The Gambia’s Atlantic coast. And not without just cause; at the time, malaria wa…

Being able to verify personal identity is crucial for accessing rights, benefits and services – whether they are financial, health-related or educational.There are currently an estimated 1.5 billion people worldwide without the means to officially verify who they are. Providing a legal identity for all is increasingly linked to human rights and dev…

I first saw a baby with HIV in 2010. I was doing a master’s course in nutrition at the University of Nairobi and I’d travelled to Kampala in Uganda to work as a volunteer nutritionist at Baylor College of Medicine, a clinic that provides care and support for more than 6,000 HIV-infected children and their families. I later became a nutrition office…

Rapid developments in the field of synthetic biology and its associated tools and methods, including more widely available gene editing techniques, have substantially increased our capabilities for bioengineering – the application of principles and techniques from engineering to biological systems, often with the goal of addressing 'real-world' pro…

My first full term in office has flown by. It has not allowed me to get a full picture of the collegiate University’s activities, but it has served to confirm, in my mind, the excellent work that our students, lecturers, researchers, staff and alumni are involved in every day.The past two months have given me the opportunity to reflect on one of th…

On October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy made landfall on the New Jersey coastline and swept into the New York City Metropolitan Region as a tropical storm. It unleashed flooding and destruction in its wake and became the second costliest disaster in U.S. history with $65 billion in damages.The storm brought the region to it’s knees, crushing critical …

Traditionally, research on issues affecting children and young people has tended to focus more on younger children, (the under-fives and school age children) or vulnerable children (orphans, ‘street children’ or child labourers). Similarly, many research and policy narratives have focused on the problems that children face, without always recognisi…

The report aims to support the development of an informed global discourse across the humanitarian, peace and sustainable development agendas and as a counter to some of the sensationalist claims often propagated by the media. In so doing, the paper illustrates that to adequately address human mobility in international and national policy responses…

 Some early thinking by the European Commission is available, as well as the recommendations of the High Level Group chaired by Pascal Lamy, which was published this summer. Since the publication of the report, many stakeholder organisations have provided their feedback and early thinking on FP9. Discussions cover a range of ideas and issues:contin…

 Welcome to ‘DFID Research’, our new blog series. As DFID’s Chief Scientific Adviser, I have a lead role in ensuring that DFID ministers and officials can access and use relevant high quality evidence and scientific expertise, to inform their decision making. I am also responsible for overseeing DFID’s substantial research budget. I am seconded fro…

Where is aid being spent?Humanitarian work remains the largest singular spend of ODA, accounting for £1.284bn or 15% of total ODA spent. This consists of three principal areas: initial emergency response; reconstruction, relief and rehabilitation; and disaster prevention and preparedness. The top five countries receiving ODA humanitarian assistance…

Climate finance, while efficient in sectors such as renewable energy, is not effective in protecting increasingly threatenedforests or the rights of their inhabitants, anew report shows."It's just so much easier to put money into wind farms," Charlotte Streck, director of the advisory companyClimate Focus, says during the launch of the report (24 O…

Such expertise includes the ability to combine knowledge from different disciplines, as well as to assess which disciplines and stakeholders have relevant perspectives, figure out how elements of problems are interconnected, decide how to deal with critical unknowns, and use research to support evidence-based change. A new discipline of integration…