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Significance The question whether sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) can be self-sufficient in cereals by 2050 is of global relevance. Currently, SSA is amongst the (sub)continents with the largest gap between cereal consumption and production, whereas its projected tripling demand between 2010 and 2050 is much greater than in other continents. We show that nearly complete closure of the gap between current farm yields and yield potential is needed to maintain the current level of cereal self-sufficiency (approximately 80%) by 2050. For all countries, such yield gap closure requires a large, abrupt acceleration in rate of yield increase. If this acceleration is not achieved, massive cropland expansion with attendant biodiversity loss and greenhouse gas emissions or vast import dependency are to be expected.

In healthcare settings, compliance with clinical protocols and medical guidelines is important to ensure high-quality, safe and effective treatment of patients. How to measure compliance and how to represent compliance information in an interpretable and actionable way is still an open challenge. In this paper, we propose new metrics for compliance assessments. For this purpose, we use two fuzzy aggregation techniques, namely the OWA operator and the Sugeno integral. The proposed measures take into consideration three factors: (i) the degree of compliance with a single activity, (ii) the degree of compliance of a patient, and (iii) the importance of the activities. The proposed measures are applied to two clinical protocols used in practice. We demonstrate that the proposed measures for compliance can further aid clinicians in assessing the aspect of protocol compliance when evaluating the effectiveness of implemented clinical protocols.

Which blind spots shape scholarship in International Political Economy (IPE)? That question animates the contributions to a double special issue—one in the Review of International Political Economy, and a companion one in New Political Economy. The global financial crisis had seemed to vindicate broad-ranging IPE perspectives at the expense of narrow economics theories. Yet the tumultuous decade since then has confronted IPE scholars with rapidly-shifting global dynamics, many of which had remained underappreciated. We use the Blind Spots moniker in an attempt to push the topics covered here higher up the scholarly agenda—issues that range from institutionalized racism and misogyny to the rise of big tech, intensifying corporate power, expertise-dynamics in global governance, assetization, and climate change. Gendered and racial inequalities as blind spots have a particular charge. There has been a self-reinforcing correspondence between topics that have counted as important, people to whom they matter personally, and the latter’s ability to build careers on them. In that sense, our mission is not only to highlight collective blind spots that may dull IPE’s capacity to theorize the current moment. It is also a normative one—a form of disciplinary housekeeping to help correct both intellectual and professional entrenched biases.

Problematic alcohol use has been increasing in older adults (55+) in recent decades. Many of the effective interventions that are available to prevent or reduce the negative effects of alcohol consumption are aimed at adults in general. It is unclear whether these interventions also work for older adults. The objective of this review was to understand how (i.e., which elements), in which context, and why (which mechanisms) interventions are successful in preventing or reducing (problematic) alcohol consumption among older adults. A systematic review of articles published between 2000 and 2022 was performed using PubMed, PsycINFO, Web of Science and CHINAHL. Realist evaluation was used to analyze the data. We found 61 studies on interventions aimed at preventing or reducing problematic alcohol use. Most of the interventions were not specifically designed for older adults but also included older adults. The findings of the current study highlight three major effective elements of interventions: (1) providing information on the consequences of alcohol consumption; (2) being in contact with others and communicating with them about (alcohol) problems; and (3) personalized feedback about drinking behavior. Two of these elements were also used in the interventions especially designed for older adults. Being in contact with others and communicating with them about (alcohol) problems is an important element to pay attention to for developers of alcohol interventions for older adults because loneliness is a problem for this age group and there is a relationship between the use of alcohol and loneliness.

Globally, agriculture and related land use change contributed about 17% of the world’s anthropogenic GHG emissions in 2010 (8.4 GtCO2e yr−1), making GHG mitigation in the agriculture sector critical to meeting the Paris Agreement’s 2°C goal. This article proposes a range of country-level targets for mitigation of agricultural emissions by allocating a global target according to five approaches to effort-sharing for climate change mitigation: responsibility, capability, equality, responsibility-capability-need and equal cumulative per capita emissions. Allocating mitigation targets according to responsibility for total historical emissions or capability to mitigate assigned large targets for agricultural emission reductions to North America, Europe and China. Targets based on responsibility for historical agricultural emissions resulted in a relatively even distribution of targets among countries and regions. Meanwhile, targets based on equal future agricultural emissions per capita or equal per capita cumulative emissions assigned very large mitigation targets to countries with large agricultural economies, while allowing some densely populated countries to increase agricultural emissions. There is no single ‘correct’ framework for allocating a global mitigation goal. Instead, using these approaches as a set provides a transparent, scientific basis for countries to inform and help assess the significance of their commitments to reducing emissions from the agriculture sector. Key policy insights Meeting the Paris Agreement 2°C goal will require global mitigation of agricultural non-CO2 emissions of approximately 1 GtCO2e yr−1 by 2030.Allocating this 1 GtCO2e yr−1 according to various effort-sharing approaches, it is found that countries will need to mitigate agricultural business-as-usual emissions in 2030 by a median of 10%. Targets vary widely with criteria used for allocation.The targets calculated here are in line with the ambition of the few countries (primarily in Africa) that included mitigation targets for the agriculture sector in their (Intended) Nationally Determined Contributions.For agriculture to contribute to meeting the 2°C or 1.5°C targets, countries will need to be ambitious in pursuing emission reductions. Technology development and transfer will be particularly important.

Abstract As large petroleum reserves were confirmed in the Yasuni National Park of Ecuador, one of the most biodiverse hotspots in the Amazonian region and the world, Ecuador has proposed indefinitely keeping almost a billion barrels of petroleum underground, if the international community contributes with at least half of the opportunity cost of exploiting the petroleum. An internationally administrated fund with UN participation will be created and invested exclusively in conservation, renewable energy and social development. The proposal has already received significant support from international institutions, European governments, NGOs and personalities worldwide. Ecuador, a less developed country in South America, remains dependent of petroleum exports, which have not led to economic growth and diversification, did not reduce poverty and inequality, and had strong environmental impacts. Given the limits of petroleum reserves, the Yasuni-ITT initiative opens alternatives towards sustainable development in the country, allowing a transition towards a post-petroleum society, and promoting ways towards human development within the limits of biodiversity conservation. This proposal, which can be replicated by other developing countries with fossil fuel reserves in biodiverse areas, opens new alternatives for post-Kyoto negotiations with binding commitments for several developing countries, and simultaneously addresses global warming, biodiversity loss, and poverty. In addition, it addresses national and international environmental justice. The article summarizes the proposal within the post-Kyoto context, and discusses relevant topics, such as its significance for Ecuador's development performance and future, as well as national and international environmental justice.

The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the UN, in 2015, established a clear global mandate for greater integrated policymaking, but there has been little consensus on how to achieve them. The COVID-19 pandemic amplified the role of policy capacity in mounting this kind of integrated policy response; however, the relationship between pre- and post-pandemic SDG efforts remains largely unexplored. In this article, we seek to address this gap through a conceptual analysis of policy integration and the capacities necessary for its application to the current SDG situation. Building on the literature on policy design, we define policy integration as the process of effectively reconciling policy goals and policy instruments and we offer a typology of policy integration efforts based on the degree of goal and instrument consistency including: policy harmonization, mainstreaming, coordination, and institutionalization. These forms of policy integration dictate the types of strategies that governments need to adopt in order to arrive at a more coherent policy mix. Following the dimensions of policy capacity by Wu et al. (2015), policy capacities are identified that are critical to ensuring successful integration. This information, thus, contributes to both academic- and policy-related debates on policy integration, by advancing conceptual clarity on the different, and sometimes, diverging concepts used in the field.