Environment

With the popularity of Korean Wave all over the world, K-Agrifoodtech is also leaping forward on the world stage. The Korean author shared about his recent visit to the AFRO 2023 in Seoul.

As long as hydrogen production relies heavily on fossil fuels, the policy will distract South Korea from its 2050 carbon neutrality strategy and end up emitting enormous additional greenhouse gases. To keep the net-zero pledge on track, South Korea should adopt a renewable-energy based hydrogen scheme by drastically cutting down its reliance on fossil fuels.

As the world faces the dire consequences of climate change, it is essential to reconsider our food choices and the methods used to produce them. The emergence of alternative foods, such as plant-based meat and lab-grown meat, present a futuristic and ethical solution for ensuring a sustainable future for generations to come. But how can we adapt our food culture to reflect this significant shift? Japan, the birthplace of the word oishii (good taste), offers inspiration on how to deliciously and sustainably redesign our culinary traditions.

It is now seven years since Sikkim became the first fully organic state of India. The initial years were euphoric, buoyed by lavish state support for the Organic mission. The recent years have, however, been more sobering. While the Organic Sikkim brand sustains, this major makeover has not delivered on its promise. But it still has potential.

In less than five decades, nuclear power in Taiwan went from a much lauded energy source to a nuisance. After the Fukushima incident in 2011, growing concerns about safety led to a shifting of attitudes towards nuclear power. The current Taiwanese administration continues to pursue its policy to phase out nuclear power by 2025 but meets growing challenges. This article explores the history of Taiwan's nuclear power program, the factors that led to its decline, and the security challenges of phasing out nuclear power.

South Korea’s nuclear energy policies have undergone significant changes over recent years, showing an “unstable” character depending on respective governments in power. This article explains the political factors behind these policy changes and the arguments made for and against nuclear energy in Korea; it also explores the competitive relationship between nuclear energy and renewable energy. While nuclear energy is unlikely to be phased out any time soon, the challenge for South Korea remains to create a distributed energy systems that increases local self-sufficiency in electricity supply and introduces distributed renewable energy-friendly markets.

Policy makers tend to push for “precision” digital technologies, in particular robots, drones and sensors, to address the challenges in biodiversity, the environment and even climate change. The dangerous drawback is, by minimizing human judgment, traditional knowledge and lived experiences, these technology systems tend to undermine people’s ability to nurture ecosystems.

From New Delhi to Bangkok to Seoul, Asia is facing the world’s most serious air pollution catastrophe.  Experts say this poor air quality becomes fatal with the onset of heat waves and drought from climate change, but citizens are coming up with their own solutions to tackle the dirty air.

Nearly every country has enough solar and wind to generate its required energy. Pumped hydro makes large-scale energy storage a solved problem. Australia is a global pathfinder in solar photovoltaics. Clean hydrogen, imported from Australia, is frequently touted as a major player in the decarbonization of East Asia’s industrialized countries such as Japan and South Korea. But some of the proposed export markets for hydrogen energy are largely illusory, argues Australian National University engineering professor Andrew Blakers.

Bhutan couldn’t achieve its goal of becoming a 100% organic country by 2020 despite the best of intention, strong political will and government support. What challenges have prevented Bhutan from achieving its goal and does it still or ever have the chance of achieving the goal?

Sri Lanka is in the midst of arguably the worst economic crisis during its 74-year post-independence era, with its political and social stability strained to almost breaking point. One facet of this crisis is shown in the Sri Lankan agriculture sector, which is trying to recover from the self-inflicted wounds of a misguided policy of overnight conversion to exclusively organic agriculture (EOA). The author analyzes the background that led to such an ambitious, but unrealistic, venture and describes its wide-ranging repercussions, which have put the country’s food security and farmer livelihoods under serious threat.

As the world’s third largest economy, Japan is Asia’s biggest packaging waste producer. Due to its comprehensive waste management system, Japan ranks high in the plastic management index, but plastic reduction and reuse remain a challenge. Places like Kamikatsu, working towards a zero waste economy, show the way.

The ETC group reviews the process of technology assessment (TA) – an inclusive corrective to policymaking on new and emerging technologies. It involves people’s informed views on long-term common good, to replace top-down and opaque decision-making processes by power players.

Sagari Ramdas shows how agribusiness use big tech and big data to fulfil their ‘sustainability goals’ from indigenous Adivasi farmers of Andhra Pradesh, India. It turns out to be a case of exploitation in the name of sustainability.

The world is never short of food supply issues. They become headlines on economic and political pages, as when the US food price index surged 3.1-4.2% in 2021, and China urged its people to stock up on food ahead of winter. Scientists have resorted to plant-based meat, cultured meat and genetically engineered plants to mitigate food shortages. The author believes that some emergent food technologies are promising in terms of addressing the problems of feeding the poor, biodiversity, and climate change, yet there are also new challenges to be resolved.

Indonesia has long faced the serious issue of land grabs, driving indigenous and rural communities into conflict with plantation, forestry and infrastructure developers. Could digitising land records and national geospatial information help resolve overlapping claims to land, and promote agrarian reform in Indonesia?

Corporations are now using digital tools to push methods that dominate industrial food systems, such as artificial fertilisers, mechanisation, monocultures and toxic pesticides, onto remaining small-scale farming and fishing operations. Current trends in digitalisation threaten biodiversity, the wider environment and human health, yet there are few challenges to the tech industry’s hype about a ‘fourth industrial revolution’.

A range of new and disruptive technologies threatens potentially irreversible damage to our planet. The ETC Group discusses technologies and the imagined futures that underpin them.

While the call for consumers to recycle plastic waste is loudly and widely proclaimed by governments and producers, it is only part of the solution to a crisis caused by the proliferation of plastic materials and their ability to endure. What else needs to be done? 

As countries around the world scramble to contain the deadly coronavirus, detritus from disposable plastic is snowballing in Asia. Experts explain how the pandemic is exacerbating the plastic waste deluge, and what consumers and governments can do to address the situation.