EKO Perspectives

Policy, land and agriculture, economics and evidence, science and technology, places and development, and personal ideas.

Aerial photograph of braided river channels, floodplain vegetation and neighbouring farmland in the United States, published by the US Geological Survey

The world is protecting more nature. Is it protecting nature better?

Science & Technology

Policy

At COP17, a new UN assessment exposes the gap between biodiversity pledges and ecological recovery. Why protected areas, connected habitats and working landscapes all matter.

Oct 22, 2026

Elvis Kwame Ofori

Patchwork agricultural fields in County Dublin, Ireland

Ireland’s bioeconomy strategy opens a new chapter for research and industry

Economics & Evidence

Land & Agriculture

Policy

Ireland’s BioScale 2030 strategy aims to turn agricultural, forestry and marine resources into new products and businesses. What does it mean for Irish research and rural industry?

Oct 22, 2026

Elvis Kwame Ofori

Combine harvesting soybeans on a farm near New London, Maryland, United States, in October 2020

America feeds its people. But who is looking after its farmers?

Economics & Evidence

Policy

The US spends billions on farm relief, yet farming households face very different margins and risks. What should agricultural assistance actually protect?

Oct 21, 2026

Elvis Kwame Ofori

Will Morningstar refuels a tractor at MX Morningstar Farm in Hudson, New York, photographed by USDA in May 2022

The Second Job Behind the American Farm

Economics & Evidence

Land & Agriculture

Why do American farmers work outside farming? USDA data show how off-farm earnings protect households without necessarily making their farms profitable.

Oct 21, 2026

Elvis Kwame Ofori

Trump’s $8 billion farm relief plan: why farmers need more than another payment

Policy

Economics & Evidence

USDA has announced $8 billion in Harvest Fuel Relief, following $12 billion in earlier farm assistance. How will payments work, who benefits, and what problems remain?

Oct 20, 2026

Elvis Kwame Ofori

Ireland’s fertiliser support scheme 2026: who qualifies and how much will farmers get?

Land & Agriculture

Policy

The 2026 Fertiliser Exceptional Aid Scheme pays €40 per eligible tonne, with records checked on 23 October. Who qualifies, what could you receive, and what does the formula reward?

Oct 18, 2026

Elvis Kwame Ofori

Ghana’s 24-hour economy: how would we know if it’s working?

Policy

Economics & Evidence

Ghana’s 24-hour economy aims to create 1.7 million jobs by 2028 by using existing capital, labour and infrastructure more intensively. Knowing whether it works requires a counterfactual: what would have happened without it?

Oct 12, 2026

Elvis Kwame Ofori

Ireland cut its carbon tax. What did Budget 2027 actually buy?

Policy

Economics & Evidence

Budget 2027 cut Ireland’s carbon tax on home-heating oil and natural gas. The relief is immediate. The harder question is what Ireland loses when a long-term price signal is reversed.

Oct 9, 2026

Elvis Kwame Ofori

Looking up the buttressed trunk of a large rainforest tree into a dense green canopy in the Caxiuanã National Forest, Pará, Brazil

The carbon credit that wasn’t there

Economics & Evidence

Policy

Two major studies agree that forest carbon credits claimed several times what the projects achieved, even where forests were protected. The registries have since rewritten how baselines are set. The old credits are still being retired.

Oct 5, 2026

Elvis Kwame Ofori

A young man leans over a large bed of cocoa beans spread out to dry in the sun at Nkyerepoaso in the Ashanti Region of Ghana, with trees and a house behind

Europe’s forest rule will trace the cocoa. Will it save the forest?

Policy

Places & Development

From 30 December the EU will require every cocoa, coffee, palm oil, soy, rubber, timber and cattle shipment to be traced to a plot cleared of no forest since 2020. Ghana has built the systems to comply and Côte d’Ivoire is struggling. The harder question is what the rule cannot see.

Oct 5, 2026

Elvis Kwame Ofori

Diagram of six steps in starting a research paper: a problem in the world, reading for the shape of the field, asking whether it is solved, checking that data exist, settling on one question, and choosing an explanatory or foresight lens

How to start a research paper, and why you should

Personal & Ideas

A paper worth writing starts with a failure in the world, not a method or a gap in a literature review. Five questions get you from that failure to something you can answer.

Oct 5, 2026

Elvis Kwame Ofori

Two smallholder farmers stand either side of a young orange tree heavy with fruit on red, freshly worked soil in Machakos County, Kenya, with eucalyptus trees behind them

Africa’s food problem is not too many people

Places & Development

Land & Agriculture

Sub-Saharan Africa will add more than half the world’s population growth to 2050. The evidence says it can feed far more people than it does today, but only if yields rise faster than they ever have, and honest numbers show whether they are.

Oct 4, 2026

Elvis Kwame Ofori

Long mounds of harvested yellow corn piled on open ground beside an ethanol plant in Atlantic, Iowa

A climate credit that will not count the land

Land & Agriculture

Policy

The United States now pays corn ethanol a clean-fuel credit calculated without the emissions from land converted to grow more crops. The science on that effect is contested. Writing it out of the law does not settle the dispute. It hides it.

Oct 4, 2026

Elvis Kwame Ofori

Two small trees standing alone in a vast field of bare, reddish-brown cleared ground in the Brazilian Amazon, crossed by a pale dirt track

Feeding the world or destroying it

Land & Agriculture

Policy

Farming already uses almost half the world’s habitable land, and new studies show where the damage is concentrated. The argument over intensive versus ecological farming misses the condition both sides depend on: land that is protected because someone decided it would be.

Oct 4, 2026

Elvis Kwame Ofori

Annotated satellite image of northern Nepal on 26 August 2026, showing the collapsed glacier and a trail of flood water and debris running down the valley towards the border with China

Nepal asked for $20 million. The money has not arrived

Policy

Economics & Evidence

The world has agreed that climate-vulnerable countries need money to adapt and to recover. It has created the funds and set the targets. What it has not done is pay.

Oct 4, 2026

Elvis Kwame Ofori

The sediment-laden River Pra in Ghana flowing between dense green riverbanks

We cannot drink gold

Places & Development

Policy

Ghana arrests hundreds of illegal miners a year and convicts a handful. The problem is not a shortage of soldiers. It is who profits from the gold and who pays for the water.

Oct 4, 2026

Elvis Kwame Ofori

A smallholder farmer hand-weeding a dry-bean plot with a hoe in Hlokozi, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

One hectare, many promises

Policy

Land & Agriculture

Climate, biodiversity, energy, housing and food are all asking more of the same land. Governments are answering with plans and targets, and scientists disagree about what land should do next. The farmer who lives from it is rarely at the table.

Oct 2, 2026

Elvis Kwame Ofori

Newly planted young trees at Bansha in County Tipperary, Ireland

Thirty years of Irish tree-planting promises, checked against the record

Policy

Land & Agriculture

Ireland has planted a fraction of the forest it promised since 1996. Licensing explains one bad stretch. Farmers walking away from planting explains more of the gap.

Oct 1, 2026

Elvis Kwame Ofori

A 1905 Ordnance Survey six-inch map of Dunfanaghy and surrounding land in County Donegal

A map can clarify the world and still leave something out

Economics & Evidence

Personal & Ideas

Reading James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State as a warning about simplification, and as a useful question for anyone who builds models for policy.

Sep 24, 2026

Elvis Kwame Ofori

Burning gorse and heather in a mountain landscape in County Cork, Ireland

Wildfire policy begins before the fire

Policy

Land & Agriculture

Europe is treating wildfire less as an emergency event and more as a land-management problem. Ireland has reasons to pay attention.

Sep 24, 2026

Elvis Kwame Ofori

Agricultural fields in County Dublin forming a patchwork rural landscape

When environmental policy needs a landscape, not just a farm

Land & Agriculture

Policy

Some environmental problems do not stop at the farm gate. Ireland’s ACRES landscape actions show why coordination can matter across holdings.

Sep 22, 2026

Elvis Kwame Ofori

Four secondary-school students in uniform gathered around one laptop at a classroom desk

AI is becoming ordinary. The evidence about its effects is still catching up

Science & Technology

Economics & Evidence

Generative AI is becoming ordinary in classrooms and everyday life. The scientific question is shifting from what the tools can do to what happens when people actually use them.

Sep 22, 2026

Elvis Kwame Ofori

Wet raised bog landscape at Clara Bog, County Offaly

When the future is outside the data

Economics & Evidence

Climate and land-use targets can push economics beyond what historical data can tell us. Scenario models offer a way to explore futures that have not yet been observed.

Sep 22, 2026

Elvis Kwame Ofori

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