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Challenges in Water Management

Hello delegates! A nation’s agricultural output is necessarily limited by its access to secure water supplies. For that reason, effective water management plays a crucial role in sustainable agricultural development. Unfortunately, agriculture often plays a large role in decreasing water security. Water intensive crops and pollution from agricultural runoff provide key challenges to effective water management. Moreover, modern pesticides and fertilizer used in industrial farming pose a threat to maintaining the integrity of water resources. Here are some questions to consider for our upcoming committee session: What concerns does your country have surrounding freshwater availability? How do water management problems vary by region and how can we adapt solutions to meet both local and international interests? How are certain sustainable agriculture techniques linked to challenges in water managed? Could organic farming principles help pave a path towards effectiv
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How Is Climate Change Affecting All?

Climate change is affecting the world in many ways besides agriculture. Changing sea levels are affecting the economies and futures of island and coastal regions. Drastic shifts in temperature are causing horrific natural disasters and increased energy bills. But perhaps most importantly, climate change has a significant effect upon agriculture around the world, which directly relates to this committee's second topic. Food supply is strictly volatile as a result of a few major variables: temperature, water, and pollution. It is clear that from America to Africa, climate change has lowered yield due to sediment contamination from pollution. Poor water management certainly does not aid in efforts to combat natural droughts, which especially decrease the yield of important crops such as maize. High temperatures as a result of the greenhouse effect have contributed to droughts and dryer conditions. In combination with more frequent pockets of low pressure along coastal regions, such
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General Advice before Conference!

Hello Delegates! BMUN is 9 days away!! We are so excited to finally meet you in person and talk about both intellecutal property rights and innovation & sustainable agricultural development! Update on position paper grading and feedback: we are going to finish grading for all papers before the end of this Sunday and all graded version of your position paper will contain thorough comments and suggestions for improvements. The content for this week’s blog is general advice that we have for you before conference concerning delegation cooperation, debate, resolution writing and diplomacy. For delegation cooperation, since we are a double delegation committee, we would strongly suggest that partners within a double delegation demonstrate a high degree of smooth cooperation in interaction with other delegations. The balance and division of labor between the two delegates are important indicators of in-committee performance. For debate, we would recommend that quality matters mo
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TRIPS Flexibility and Public Health

Hello delegates! For this week's topical blog post on the first topic, we will be talking about the TRIPS flexibilities and especially how its application in the public health realm affects innovation in the related field. One interesting article on this topic is The Impact of Intellectual Property Regulation on Global Medical Technology Innovation by Tiffany E Chao and Gita N Mody. (The link of which can be found here: https://innovations.bmj.com/content/bmjinnov/1/2/49.full.pdf) The article focuses on the protection of intellectual property rights and medical technology innovation in low resource setting. The authors argue that the current international intellectual property rights protection is not in the interest of local innovative incentives of the developing countries. Several reasons are summarized by the author - First, lack of incentives for innovators to seek IP protection is especially common in low-resource setting environment. Some of the reasons include high
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Refresh your memory on the topic synopsis before conference!!

Hello delegates! Congratulations on officially submitting your position papers and completing the first phase for researching! We are currently working hard on grading all of your amazing works and will share our comments to individual position papers as soon as possible! After reading a few of your papers, I think it's important to pose a few questions that will further your understandings of what is going to be discussed in our topics. These questions are intended to refresh your memory on the important issue areas in the topic synopsis and help you sharpen your thoughts on both your country's positions and proposed solutions :D For our first topic, intellectual property rights and innovation , we will basically cover 3 major aspects: international technology transfer, competition policy and TRIPS flexibilities (esp. in public health realm). International Technology Transfer and Global Innovation Problem: Contrasting interests between developed countries and developi
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Intellectual Property and Competition Laws: Challenges

Intellectual property rights---copyrights, patents, design rights, and trademarks---exist to incentivize innovation in the marketplace. However, because of the complex nature of international regulations, intellectual property protections often fail to extend beyond borders. In fact, US President Donald Trump cites Chinese intellectual property theft on American goods as one of the reasons for imposing tariffs on Chinese goods (Volodzko). These complications tie into the inherent tension between innovation and intellectual property regulation: in some ways, intellectual property “legitimizes monopoly” for  a “creation of the mind” (Ramaiah 1) by denying other entities access to improve upon patented material. The intellectual property regulations of Malaysia provide an important case study of the anti-competitive aspects of IPR law. The primary innovators of a new creation are often in the position to profit at the expense of society by gaining a monopoly over a certain vita
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Challenges in Soil Management

As you well know, soil faces many challenges. From natural weathering to nutrient deficiencies, the health of soil plays a large role in the crop yield of nations. Topsoil erosion is the most common cause of soil deficiencies, and significantly affects agricultural productivity. Tillage of soil is very important in determining the nutrients in soil. A study recently concluded that the amount of microbial biomass, carbon, and nitrogen was much higher in untilled plots of land in comparison to tilled plots of land. Perhaps it is better for farmers to conservatively till. There is still a great lack of knowledge as to whether or not organic alternatives to additive nutrients are sustainable and effective in improving soil management. In addition to this lack of knowledge, extreme weather events and (traditional) poorly-timed crop rotation continues to plague soil health worldwide. Questions: What are the technologies that are TRULY needed to improve soil management? Is this issue a qu
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