ban agriculture; direct links between urban consumers and rural producers) will help create and strengthen synergistic and complementary capacities.
     Preferential investments in equitable development (e.g., literacy, education and training) that contribute to reduc­ing ethnic, gender, and other inequities would advance de­velopment goals. Measurements of returns to investments require indices that give more information than GDP, and that are sensitive to environmental and equity gains. The use of inequality indices for screening AKST investments and monitoring outcomes strengthens accountability. The Gini-coefficient could, for example, become a public criterion for policy assessment, in addition to the more conventional measures of growth, inflation and environment.

Investments
Achieving development and sustainability goals would en­tail increased funds and more diverse funding mechanisms for agricultural research and development and associated knowledge systems, such as:
•   Public investments in global, regional, national and local public goods; food security and safety, climate change and sustainability. More efficient use of increas­ingly scarce land, water and biological resources re­quires investment in research and development of legal and management capabilities.
•   Public investments in agricultural knowledge systems to promote interactive knowledge networks (farmers, sci­entists, industry and actors in other knowledge areas); improved access to information and communication technologies (ICT); ecological, evolutionary, food, nu­trition, social and complex systems' sciences; effective interdisciplinarity; capacity in core agricultural scienc­es; and improving life-long learning opportunities along the food system.
•   Public-private partnerships for improved commerciali­zation of applied knowledge and technologies and joint funding of AKST, where market risks are high and where options for widespread utilization of knowledge exist.
•   Adequate incentives and rewards to encourage private and civil society investments in AKST contributing to development and sustainability goals.
•   In many developing countries, it may be necessary to complement these investments with increased and more targeted investments in rural infrastructure, education and health.

In the face of new global challenges, there is an urgent need to strengthen, restructure and possibly establish new in­tergovernmental, independent science and evidence-based networks to address such issues as climate forecasting for agricultural production; human health risks from emerg­ing diseases; reorganization of livelihoods in response to changes in agricultural systems (population movements); food security; and global forestry resources.

Themes
The Synthesis Report looked at eight AKST-related themes of critical interest to meeting development and sustainabil­ity goals: bioenergy, biotechnology, climate change, human

health, natural resource management, trade and markets, traditional and local knowledge and community-based in­novation and women in agriculture.

Bioenergy
Rising costs of fossil fuels, energy security concerns, in­creased awareness of climate change and potentially positive effects for economic development have led to considerable public attention to bioenergy. Bioenergy includes traditional bioenergy, biomass to produce electricity, light and heat and first and next generation liquid biofuels. The economics and the positive and negative social and environmental exter­nalities differ widely, depending on source of biomass, type of conversion technology and local circumstances.
     Primarily due to a lack of affordable alternatives, mil­lions of people in developing countries depend on traditional bioenergy (e.g., wood fuels) for their cooking and heating needs, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. This reliance on traditional bioenergy can pose consider­able environmental, health, economic and social challenges. New efforts are needed to improve traditional bioenergy and accelerate the transition to more sustainable forms of energy.
     First generation biofuels consist predominantly of bio-ethanol and biodiesel produced from agricultural crops (e.g., maize, sugar cane). Production has been growing fast in recent years, primarily due to biofuel support policies since they are cost competitive only under particularly fa­vorable circumstances. The diversion of agricultural crops to fuel can raise food prices and reduce our ability to allevi­ate hunger throughout the world. The negative social effects risk being exacerbated in cases where small-scale farmers are marginalized or displaced from their land. From an en­vironmental perspective, there is considerable variation, un­certainty and debate over the net energy balance and level of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In the long term, effects on food prices may be reduced, but environmental effects caused by land and water requirements of large-scale in­creases of first generation biofuels production are likely to persist and will need to be addressed.
     Next generation biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol and biomass-to-liquids technologies allow conversion into bio­fuels of more abundant and cheaper feedstocks than first generation. This could potentially reduce agricultural land requirements per unit of energy produced and improve life-cycle GHG emissions, potentially mitigating the environ­mental pressures from first generation biofuels. However, next generation biofuels technologies are not yet commer­cially proven and environmental and social effects are still uncertain. For example, the use of feedstock and farm resi­dues can compete with the need to maintain organic matter in sustainable agroecosystems.
     Bioelectricity and bioheat are important forms of renew­able energy that are usually more efficient and produce less GHG emissions than liquid biofuels and fossil fuels. Digest­ers, gasifiers and direct combustion devices can be success­fully employed in certain settings, e.g., off-grid areas. There is potential for expanding these applications but AKST is needed to reduce costs and improve operational reliability. For all forms of bioenergy, decision makers should carefully weigh full social, environmental and economic costs against