SONAM RAINA

Ethiopia recently unveiled a locally developed probiotic starter culture called Etittuu, designed to ferment milk more efficiently and reduce reliance on imported dairy processing inputs. Researchers say the culture can ferment pasteurised milk in as little as four hours, improving processing efficiency while helping the country 'save foreign exchange previously spent on imported starter cultures'. Dairy is an important part of Ethiopian diets and livelihoods. The country has Africa's largest cattle population, millions of smallholder farmers depend on dairy production, and rising urban demand is increasing the need for reliable and affordable dairy products. Etittuu, if it can be adopted at scale, it could improve product consistency, strengthen local dairy processing, reduce import dependence, support rural incomes, and contribute to greater food self-reliance. Many countries have developed food innovations to reduce dependance on imports - • Singapore: Urban farming and alternative protein technologies under the 30 by 30 strategy to reduce food import dependence. • Saudi Arabia: Controlled-environment agriculture and greenhouse technologies to boost domestic food production. • Nigeria: Investments in local dairy processing and milk production to reduce reliance on imported milk powder. • Rwanda: Expansion of domestic food processing and value-addition industries to strengthen food security. • United Arab Emirates: Vertical farming and desert agriculture technologies aimed at producing more food locally. • Brazil: Tropical agriculture innovations developed through Embrapa that helped reduce dependence on imported agricultural technologies and improved domestic productivity. Do you know of similar examples of food innovation in your country or other countries where a locally developed food innovation helped (or will help) a country reduce dependence on imported agricultural inputs or food products?

The UAE generates an estimated 220,000 tonnes of textile waste every year.. think of it as a 70-storey waste skyscraper that rises every year. Last week, the country launched Naseej — the National Initiative for Textile Circularity. Naseej is officially framed as aligning policy, industry, and consumer behaviour under one national framework — the point at which these efforts usually break down. Lets look at three international comparisons. France introduced mandatory Extended Producer Responsibility for textiles in 2007, requiring brands to pay fees to the eco-organisation Refashion based on the volume and environmental impact of what they put on the market - the most mature model in the world, though it still hasn't reached its government-set 50% collection target after 17 years. The Netherlands introduced its own mandatory Textile EPR Decree in July 2023, with legally binding recycling and reuse targets rising to 75% and 25% respectively by 2030. Australia's Seamless scheme, operational since July 2024, takes a different approach - voluntary, industry-led, funded by a 4-cent-per-garment levy, with brands responsible for the full garment lifecycle from design to disposal. Naseej, built on memoranda of understanding with brands, manufacturers, and recyclers rather than statutory obligations, sits structurally closer to Australia's Seamless than to the European mandatory models. Voluntary frameworks depend on sustained brand participation and government follow-through on the regulatory pillar. Whether the UAE translates the policy and regulations pillar into enforceable rules will likely determine how far Naseej moves beyond a coordination platform. The upstream question is: how do you reduce the volume of clothing entering the waste stream, not just improve what happens to it afterwards? What do you think creates more durable change - mandatory producer levies, voluntary stewardship, or intervention at the design stage?

Startups working at the intersection of climate and health, developing technology solutions for children, would be happy to know that the UNICEF Venture Fund is inviting such startups to apply for its Climate Ventures cohort. Selected applicants will be eligible to receive up to US $100,000 in equity-free funding for early-stage and deployment-ready technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and blockchain. To be considered, companies must be registered in one of UNICEF's programme countries, must possess working prototypes, and must demonstrate a firm commitment to open-source licensing and practices. Applications from women-led startups and young founders are strongly encouraged.

This will be a long technical read but worth everyone's time. Last night, I was reading about how the near-total shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz (it hasn't gotten back to normalcy) has sent shockwaves through global fertilizer markets. About a third of global seaborne fertilizer trade typically passes through the Strait. Urea prices have already jumped nearly 30% since the war began, and global fertilizer prices are projected to average 15–20% higher through the first half of 2026. Unlike oil, there are no internationally coordinated strategic fertilizer reserves to cushion the blow. The UN has warned this disruption could push 45 million more people into hunger. Yes, 45 million! For India specifically, urea import prices have nearly doubled ahead of the sowing season. While researching fertilizer prices, I came across this study published by India-based ICRISAT (International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics) on sorghum. The researchers tested nearly 200 diverse sorghum varieties under three nitrogen conditions - zero fertilizer, half the recommended dose, and the full amount, across two growing seasons. Grain yields under half the recommended dose of nitrogen were comparable to those under full application! Same harvest, half the input, but the real breakthrough was going beyond the field into the genetics to identify genomic regions associated with nitrogen use efficiency and key candidate genes that regulate how sorghum absorbs, transports, and utilizes nitrogen. I know this was a complex sentence. Think of it as finding the efficiency dial hardwired into the plant and figuring out exactly how it works. And here's the baseline problem this solves - crops typically use only 30–40% of the nitrogen fertilizer applied, the rest is lost to the environment, degrading soil and water! The findings don't stop at sorghum as the researchers believe the insights can be applied to major cereals like rice, wheat, and maize.

You may be wearing solar cells in a few years ... not panels on a rooftop, but thin films on your jacket and even your windows. That possibility comes from perovskites, a family of engineered materials that have had one of the steepest efficiency curves in the history of solar research. In just over a decade since the first lab cell in 2009, single-junction perovskite cells have reached efficiencies of 24–29%, already overlapping with commercial silicon's 22–27%. Stack them on top of silicon in what's called a tandem cell, and you push past what either material can do alone... certified tandem efficiencies have now crossed 35%. Beyond efficiency, perovskites can be made lightweight, flexible, and semi-transparent using low-temperature processes which opens up use cases silicon cannnot reach like facades, windows, portable electronics, and surfaces that can't bear the weight of conventional panels. There are challenges. perovskites remain sensitive to heat, moisture, and UV exposure, and commercially available silicon panels are guaranteed to last 25–30 years - a bar most perovskite designs haven't cleared yet. Then there's lead - the most efficient formulations use small amounts of it, which keeps regulators watchful even as lead-free alternatives are explored. On the commercial side, China is clearly ahead...GCL Optoelectronics and UtmoLight both opened gigawatt-scale perovskite factories in 2025, with the latter already offering a 25-year output guarantee on deployed modules. Europe is catching up on the R&D and early commercial side - Oxford PV, a University of Oxford spinoff, was the first to ship commercial tandem modules. Perovskites probably won't replace silicon overnight, but they come with a lot of potential for use cases that are not in the purview of silicon.

Not too long back, Eurostat confirmed that 12.2% of all materials used across the EU in 2024 came from recycled sources. The EU's own 2030 target is roughly 23%. At this pace, it seems that EU won't make the target but two countries have already blown past that target and years early. The Netherlands sits at 32.7%. Belgium at 22.7%. Meanwhile, Romania is at 1.3%, Finland and Ireland at 2%. That's not a small gap. So what are they actually doing right? The Netherlands started with a national conversation in 2017, where 180 organisations - government, businesses, trade unions, environmental groups signed a Raw Materials Agreement committing to figure this out together. That led to a concrete 2030 roadmap with targets broken down by sector. Cities like Amsterdam baked circular principles into public procurement, construction contracts, and even subsidised repair cafés. The goal was to halve primary raw material use by 2030, full circularity by 2050. Belgium runs an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme for packaging which means that the companies making packaging are financially responsible for what happens to it afterwards. The result is 80% packaging recycling, the highest in the EU, already past the 2030 target. Flanders alone saw circular business activity grow 35% in three years. From the way I see it, countries with similar demographics and wealth can do three things right now: 1. Put the cost on producers, not consumers 2. Get governments buying recycled materials first 3. Fund repair culture - cafés, subsidies, second-hand incentives The Netherlands even published their roadmap in English specifically so others could use it.

Recent global tensions have pushed up oil prices significantly, and that increase is now feeding into the cost of virgin plastic, which is derived from fossil fuels. As oil becomes more expensive, so does new plastic. As a result, the price gap between new (virgin) plastic and recycled plastic is narrowing. For years, policymakers and researchers have said that sustainability is about future-proofing your business. Companies that rely less on volatile resources like fossil fuels are possibly better positioned to handle shocks, whether from geopolitics, supply disruptions, or long-term resource constraints. The takeaway for me isn’t whether this specific shock changes behaviour. It’s that, over time, sustainability and circularity may become less about values and more about resilience and long-term competitiveness. In the picture: Recycled plastic pellets

A 2025 research review on cassava and climate resilience makes a fairly strong claim that cassava could become one of the most important crops for food security in a warming world. The paper highlights that cassava can withstand drought, poor soils, and irregular rainfall better than many staple crops, while also acting as an insurance crop, as it can stay in the ground and be harvested when needed during food shortages. It already feeds hundreds of millions of people and supports rural incomes, especially in Africa. Reading this also made me think about India. We already grow climate-resilient crops like millets (such as ragi and bajra), sorghum (jowar), pulses, and cassava in some regions, all of which can tolerate heat and lower water availability better than crops like rice. The bigger takeaway for me is this - climate resilience may not come from new crops alone, but from re-evaluating crops we already have but underuse. Which crops do you think are likely to become more important in your region as the climate changes?