Gilman Foreign Policy in Focus: Global Food Security – Seminar 2

Summary

In the second seminar of the Gilman Foreign Policy in Focus series, the topic of global food security was examined with a specific focus on climate change. The session was introduced by NL Habashy from Penn State University and featured Dr. Chris Scott, who highlighted the relationship between climate change and food security. Key discussions revolved around the increased concerns about climate change's effect on food availability, the impact of human activities like agriculture on climate, and solutions through adaptation and mitigation. Insights into current trends, historical data, and the need for more efficient and sustainable agricultural practices were emphasized throughout the session.

Highlights

• NL Habashy and Dr. Chris Scott elaborate on climate change affecting food security. 🌾
• Audience participation through live surveys brings diverse international perspectives to the discussion. 🌐
• In-depth analysis of greenhouse gases and their significant impacts on global warming. 🔥
• Highlighted examples of adaptive practices in agriculture across various regions. 🌽
• Discussion on technological and policy innovations to address climate impacts on agriculture. 🛠️

Key Takeaways

• Climate change is deeply connected to global food security, affecting both availability and accessibility. 🌍
• Adaptation and mitigation strategies are crucial to combat the impacts of climate change on agriculture. 🌱
• Greenhouse gases play a significant role in climate change, with measures needed to reduce emissions. 🌿
• Regions most affected by climate change contribute the least to greenhouse gas emissions. 🌎
• Collaboration across sectors and borders is necessary for effective climate and food security strategies. 🤝

Overview

The seminar kicked off with NL Habashy introducing the urgent topic of climate change and its intersection with global food security. With contributors from Penn State University, this session continued the series' exploration of food security by delving into how climate changes affect agricultural productivity, natural resources, and ultimately, global stability. Attendees were engaged through interactive elements like live polls and quizzes, generating a lively discussion on participants' climate concerns and awareness.

Dr. Chris Scott's presentation brought to light the critical nature of adaptation and mitigation in dealing with climate change's impacts on food production. He emphasized the importance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and exploring sustainable agricultural practices to combat these challenges. Participants gained insight into the complex interplay between human activities and ecological balance, furthering their understanding of climate-induced disruptions to agricultural systems.

The seminar spanned a broad array of topics, from scientific data illustrating the rise in global temperatures to the role of policy in managing climate impacts. Dr. Scott shared examples of collaborative projects in regions like the Andes and Sahel, where resource management is key to coping with climate changes. The session concluded with a call to action for individual and collective efforts to reduce food waste and support climate-friendly practices in agriculture and beyond.

Gilman Foreign Policy in Focus: Global Food Security – Seminar 2 Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 hello all uh good afternoon or good morning or good evening good night wherever you are joining from um I am NL habashy I am a teacher Professor here at Penn State University and uh I get the great privilege of introducing you to our second seminar series on Global Food security um for those of you who are with us two weeks ago we had an inory look at uh global food security and sort
• 00:30 - 01:00 of some of the current trends so we kind of had this big sort of picture overview of what is food security what are we seeing in terms of Trends related to that and now we're taking a deeper dive into some specific topics related to to food security so today's theme is climate change and food security because that's a pretty big connection um and a lot of conversations and questions and concerns connected to this um so I am joined by Dr Chris so we'll hear from a
• 01:00 - 01:30 little bit later and um I'm delighted to be here with you all so what I'm going to do I'm going to start things off um I appreciate it many of you are joining from many places around the world many states in the United States I know a lot of people are University students in the United States or recent graduates um recent recipients of the Gilman scholarship maybe youve received this Gilman scholarship a while ago um but many of you are coming from other places and have joined us from lots of different
• 01:30 - 02:00 part so uh to make this a little bit more interactive and a little bit more fun if you can go to slido.com and put in that uh code there's a QR code there and Mary if you don't mind putting anything in the link into the chat for people to join the slido um I want to get a sense of where you are joining us from um before we jump into things so the first question I have for you here is if you're in the United States what state are you joining from or if you're in a country outside of the United
• 02:00 - 02:30 States what uh country are you joining from so Texas debatable whether a country or a state Virginia Maryland Denmark Colombia Pennsylvania Maryland okay this is terrific seeing some good migration here um California DC South Carolina Italy all right we'll give folks another couple of seconds to jump in terrific the Philippines Connecticut
• 02:30 - 03:00 that's some good Maryland is representing strong I appreciate that okay um keep that same whether you used uh your phone or a browser window keep that open because we're going to refer back to that at a few different points um so another question I have is how worried are you about the effects of climate change um I know there are a lot of conversations related to climate change taking place in lots in various circles right not just related to food
• 03:00 - 03:30 security um and so want to get a sense of how concerned are you in relation to to climate change um so if you could go ahead and respond we'll give you another couple seconds here we've got 29 responses so far um okay we'll give you one more second all right so it seems like very worried is the highest number um maybe a little bit of selection bias in that if You' joined this session maybe you're already thinking about this and concerned um but been some variation
• 03:30 - 04:00 of extremely worried moderately mildly worried so what what part of this is is looking at is um the this this was a question that was asked to uh young people sort of globally 60% of young people approached they felt very worried or extremely worried 45 five% said they question had feelings um that climate affected their daily lives and and I I want to use this to sort of frame the intention for part of this conversation the idea here is not to uh scare the pants off of you right the the idea here
• 04:00 - 04:30 is what what do we know from looking at the scientific data what do we know in terms of its impacts on food security but then also how do um individuals communities governmental agencies how do collectively people respond um as a result of this so we're going to take a look at some of this um some of this may feel a little Elementary from from my session here I'm going to kind of go over some of the introductory things some of you may work in these fields this may feel very um Elementary in terms of what we're focusing on
• 04:30 - 05:00 I think it's helpful to just get everybody on the same page as we're going through if you have questions that you would like to ask to me or to Dr Scott who will be joining us as well um there's a Q&A option there in the bottom of the zoom screen please put your questions in there and we'll have time for Q&A at the end of the session so with that in mind three questions we're going to look at together here to start things off one what is climate change which let's get on the same page there two what's the relationship between climate change and food secur security
• 05:00 - 05:30 and three how can we respond to the impacts of climate change on food security so first question what is climate change so we have a quote here so take a look climate change could have significant geopolitical impacts around the world contributing to Poverty environmental degradation and the further weakening of fragile governments climate change will contribute to food and water scarcity will increase the spread of disease and may spur or exacerbate Mass migration want you to think who you think said
• 05:30 - 06:00 that who who made this this a pretty bold statement about the effects of climate change and when I've asked people or groups or students before sometimes people think like green peace or Environmental Protection Agency or different things some sort of environmental activist no it's those tree hugging hippies at the US Department of Defense and in fact this statement came fully 14 years ago I mean this some of you may have been in Diapers at this point in time right this is and I think since February of 2010 exactly 14 years ago we have seen
• 06:00 - 06:30 certain components of um environmental degradation migration food and water scarcity even compared to 2010 we're seeing some of these pieces so as we get in here I want to ask a couple of questions so this is a quiz question there's a a little on the line here you get to put in your name so first question which of the following is not considered a greenhouse gas carbon dioxide oxygen methane or nitrous
• 06:30 - 07:00 oxide so take a look here right we got options here and one second so let's see okay 74% of people said oxygen all right 74% of people were correct so oxygen is not a greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is methan nitrous oxide um okay greenhouse gases are and we're going for
• 07:00 - 07:30 best answer here right uh overwhelmingly positive overwhelmingly negative positive in abundance or negative in abundance I I if any of you watch like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire I always feel like I'm Regis Phil binner make your selection now all right and two one and responses are okay 76% of people said negative in abundance and 76% of people are correct right I think a lot of times there's this sort of
• 07:30 - 08:00 conversation of like oh greenhouse gases there's Earth are horrible hold on to that we we'll get to there in a second um okay Maya you're currently in the leaderboard it's still early well we'll have other chances so um there's a nice little video we're not we're not going to play it here um but Mary if you don't mind putting in the chat for uh climate change 101 for those of you if we're going to go through some of the little bit of like just even framing what is climate change if you want a little bit more there's just a really nice sort of intro video here if some of even the
• 08:00 - 08:30 terminology is is unfamiliar um but you see a chart like this right this is a a sort of a diagram that's often used we're not going to dive too far into this based on how much time it uh we're not going to talk about the albo or anything right but you see the earth right this is the surface of the Earth we have the atmosphere um there are a variety of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere right carbon dioxide methane nitrous oxide those greenhouse gas are absolutely essential because they trap
• 08:30 - 09:00 the sun's Rays they trap and the sun's energy and keep us at a nice temperature without greenhouse gases we would be frozen we would be dead right we need greenhouse gases to live the problem is when there's an overabundance of greenhouse gases that that that nice little warm bubble starts to get warmer and warmer and they're also are some other changing patterns and we can see that represented here um so again maybe you've seen charts like this but we see
• 09:00 - 09:30 from 1880 to 2010 or 2020 if you took the mean temperature from 1900 to 2000 you're seeing there's a lot of variation that the late 1800s early 1900s were much cooler and unsurprisingly the late 1900s early 2000s were much warmer um I believe eight of the past 10 years were the warmest year in recorded history um except until the next year that was the
• 09:30 - 10:00 warmest year in recorded history so we are seeing increasingly warming and warming temperatures and weather patterns have been changing for Millennia right this is not a new thing to have changing patterns the the difference is how closely it's connected to human activity and so we see charts like this right these are CO2 emissions one greenhouse gases but it's a pretty significant one and we're seeing the greenhouse gases increasing from the late 1800s so what happened in the late 1800s this
• 10:00 - 10:30 isn't a quiz question but it could have been right the Industrial Revolution and you I am seated in a wonderful building that is heated that is like there's on a computer right like there's so many benefits to the Industrial Revolution but there's also some unintended negative consequences negative externalities we could say where certain byproducts or aspects of this are are challenging um specifically looking at increases of greenhouse gases and so when you overlay these two charts you
• 10:30 - 11:00 get a pretty strong correlation between increases of of CO2 and increases of temperature um and if you go back historically you can look at CO2 levels there's lots of variation but the the current CO2 levels are uh sort of astronomic compared to where they had been previously where do you get data like this if you're interested here's another video M Mary if you don't mind dropping uh the link in here into the chat um if you all could please give Mary a nice Round of Applause at home for for
• 11:00 - 11:30 keeping us on board here um if you're interested take a look this is a video um ice course from a sort of places including Antarctica it's actually really fascinating being able to drill down and and um each year you can kind of go back year by year and look at the bubbles in it to see what what is the carbon dioxide concentration from it so this is if you're wondering like well how do you get data from hundreds of thousands of years that's how um so you can take a look at that but again we won't do that and so if we look at countries that are
• 11:30 - 12:00 producing CO2 we're seeing a map like this the darker red countries have higher levels of CO2 so perhaps unsurprising um China India the United States are the highest emitters of CO2 also the highest uh the countries with the highest populations so if we looked at per capita data you know hatar is a has a very small population with much higher CO2 emissions you would see some variation but the big thing thing to recognize here and and when we start
• 12:00 - 12:30 looking at the effects of climate change on food production and food security you'll notice countries kind of right in here subsaharan Africa lots of parts of of Latin America even if they have a sizable population are much lighter in countries so these are countries that are producing much fewer greenhouse gases but then as we'll see in a in a minute are also experiencing some of the most significant effects of climate change so when we talk about climate change that's sort of what we're we're talking about in a nutshell so second
• 12:30 - 13:00 question what is the relationship between climate change and food security so my question for you all we got a quiz question here right which of the following phenomena can result from climate change and threaten Global Food security decreased frequency of extreme weather events more predictable growing Seasons increased occurrences of floods droughts and heat waves or enhanced soil fertility and nutrient availability so which of those things is related to climate climate change and Global Food
• 13:00 - 13:30 security okay 100% oh my goodness you all are so good right and that is correct okay Maya you're holding on so there's a quote from a gentleman uh sir Gordon Conway he was he was kned for his contributions to International agriculture he actually passed away last year um but he said this quote that I mean many people probably have said similar sorts of things but agriculture is both a victim and a culprit of climate change
• 13:30 - 14:00 so both in terms of it is connected perhaps more than any other industry to changing weather patterns and as those weather patterns change It suffers significantly so the victim component but also a culprit in that there are um emissions that are produced from these processes so specifically to looking at how climate change is disrupting the global food supply there's a nice video here Mary if you don't mind um putting a a the link in the chat as well um
• 14:00 - 14:30 providing a little bit more specifics on some of these different patterns we're we're going to touch on that but again since we're going through this uh pretty quickly if you want a little bit more background there's some some interesting content within that um so let's look at the culprit side first and then we'll look at the victim side of that quote how much uh what percentage of greenhouse gases come from agriculture depending on who you talk to some people will say it's massive and more than any other some will say it's smaller than any other the truth well one like many
• 14:30 - 15:00 things it depends on how you measure it right it depends on what numbers we're looking at but we see trends like this and so hopefully you can see this tiny font here but agriculture we have here based on this set of of calculations is at 13.5% of um greenhouse gas emissions so we've got from soils livestock and manure rice cultivation right and we're seeing in particular methane emissions nitrous oxide but if we also look at land use use change there's an
• 15:00 - 15:30 incredible amount of deforestation that can be come that can come from uh greenhouse gas or from from agriculture par me and you know with that you no longer have Forest sequestering um pulling in greenhouse gases so you're and then if you're now producing greenhouse gases that's a a significant change in the change of land use um additionally if you have uh Machinery tractors equipment involved in the production or the the harvesting for
• 15:30 - 16:00 example but then also if there's production if there's transportation to move a product right if if you think about what you've eaten today I'm guessing most of it maybe not all of it maybe some of it is coming from right in your you know your immediate Community um maybe you've got some things that are coming from other parts of the world right there there's greenhouse gas emissions there so there's lots of pieces that uh there are greenhouse gas emissions to produce our food that said I need to eat you need right so there's but are there ways that
• 16:00 - 16:30 some of these processes could be happening more efficiently um and so similarly to what we saw here this kind of breaks down this this graph on the left looks at Global greenhouse gas emissions from um from Agriculture and those of you who are based in the US or if you're interested in sort of a comparative piece this is a specific to the US um so for example there's less rice production in the US compared to globally right so we're seeing some variation there so we're seeing these production
• 16:30 - 17:00 pieces but and and so some of these culprate pieces and so there's ways we can look at well how can this be done more efficiently but then also looking at some of these victim pieces right that the the um changing weather patterns specifically Rising temperatures is something we talk about a lot but there's a lot of projections and models for what temperature increases will be but undoubtedly we're looking at increasing temperatures at this point and undoubtedly um weather Agriculture and production of food is so connected
• 17:00 - 17:30 to the rising temperatures and and having a a consistent temperature um another concern is precipitation in some places you might experience more precipitation which could be beneficial or you might experiencing flooding right you can have too much precipitation absolutely some places you may experiencing less precipitation and drought um certain I'm located in in Pennsylvania in the US and and certainly there's dry spells over you know over a
• 17:30 - 18:00 summer when food is being produced but many farmers around us have irrigation systems have watering systems that are then you're able to turn on and begin to produce um or or apply water to address if there is a Dro but if you don't have that resource available if you can't afford an irrigation system if you don't have access to an irrigation system that may go from o this is hot we need to adjust to that could be your Harvest for a season um and so you're seeing precipitation having an incredible
• 18:00 - 18:30 effect um and there's a QR code if you're interested in the paper that this came from but this is changes in agricultural productivity attributed to anthropogenic climate change what does anthropogenic climate change climate change produced through human activity and involvement um and so this is currently up to the current point in terms of uh estimations of how much agricultural productivity has changed and what the impact has been so we're seeing again in Northern climates has there been an
• 18:30 - 19:00 impact yes some people even argue in Far Northern climates like you know again we're in Pennsylvania um I have family in Canada right that there's there's some of these places may actually experience some benefits because now you maybe have a longer growing season maybe you could put in uh a few get a couple of harvests earlier and throughout the season so there's might possibly be some positive changes um whereas if you look right through this tropical region this is this is an area where it's sort of a
• 19:00 - 19:30 triple threat because nations are experiencing the most acute impacts of climate change you also have farmers who are have less access to technology to combat these climate these these effects um and you also have Nations where their economies are more reliant on agriculture um if you think of again I keep drawing to the example to the United States because many people in this are coming from the United States but if you think about um the United States there's so many industries that
• 19:30 - 20:00 are contributing to the overall economy Aerospace and you know technology and different things um whereas agriculture produces a lot but it's a small percentage of the overall economy whereas many of these countries um that are experiencing the more significant effects agriculture is a pretty significant part of their economies um and and and so I think we're seeing this becomes a really significant concern um and you can tie this into issues of um security and safety right if people don't have food there's a lot of things
• 20:00 - 20:30 that people will do in order to put food on the table um for their family and and connect it to conflict and and pieces um this was a news story that came in our sort of local newspaper from a couple of days ago looking at how warming winter temperatures will impact Maple maple syrup production are there impacts of climate change in and around Northern climates or far Southern climates absolutely um and I don't want to take anything away from that but compared to what many other folks in many other regions of the world were experien some
• 20:30 - 21:00 of these impacts start to to pale by comparison um so some of the additional expected impacts changes in suitability of land for crop and livestock production changes in natural habitats of PES and diseases we're seeing that with increasing numbers of pests um Locust a variety of other things that can really Farm food production leeching of soil nutrients from more intense rain events potentially a loss of biodiversity so what would this look like I mean there's lots of projections
• 21:00 - 21:30 so the world food program has a um a website here you've got the the QR code here if you want to follow up later or this is the URL here um where you can take a look and say okay if how how much uh adaptation is there to climate change how like you can look at a variety of different factors and there's different projections um but overwhelmingly folks in especially in those sort of tropical regions are seeing the most significant effects and again over the folks who are contributing the leas to greenhouse gas emissions um and so again we mentioned
• 21:30 - 22:00 sort of conflict in security being one aspect of that um where certainly as food insecurity increases um conflict also increases as people start to resort to pretty dire means in terms of uh putting food on their on the plates of their families so last question that we're going to look at in this session here is are this section how can we respond to the impacts of climate change on food security and I I want to be thoughtful here right like
• 22:00 - 22:30 this is a big complex problem sometimes it's it's sort of we use terminology of wicked problem like we don't even know what the parameters are so I don't want to say and here are three easy steps right I I don't want to have this cute candy cated answer of just do these things and everything will be okay I don't also want to leave you with this sort of Bleak everything is lost sort of perspective that there are ways to move forward um and this happens in a variety of Fashions so we're going to just briefly look at a couple here um so what are the most common ways to address climate change within agricultural
• 22:30 - 23:00 production so adaptation and mitigation sequestration and mobilization reduction and recycling consternation and contemplation if you could please make your selections give you couple seconds here all right adaptation and mitigation all right I'm talking to a group of Pros here this is great all right and Oh Maya been dethroned
• 23:00 - 23:30 oops um okay so responses are twofold so um we're GNA look at a variety of levels in terms of agricultural production so farmers folks in the agricultural industry researchers um there's a two main Avenues of of responding are adaptation and mitigation so adaptation is saying hey the damage has been done so what can I do to respond so adjustments in systems behaviors to reduce the risks to
• 23:30 - 24:00 people's livelihoods to agricultural production that has already taken place mitigation says well what can I do to respond to reduce my own or my Industries or my Works uh production of greenhouse gases so in one ways adaptation is sort of going on the defense and saying okay how can we respond mitigation is going on the offense and say like no we're we're not going down without a fight let's make some changes here so what does this look
• 24:00 - 24:30 like adaptation examples in turn include adopting new crop varieties or new crops okay I used to grow coffee the temperatures have increased so now I'm going to grow cacao I'm going to change um I maybe I would move to a different area um more efficient irrigation and harvesting systems for water shifting planting dates integrated Pest Management how do I look at a variety of avenues of responding to pests that are maybe uh having more of an effect because of changing weather patterns
• 24:30 - 25:00 improving drainage these are just a few ways for adaptation mitigation um is looking at okay well how do I actually make changes here right that uh using soil to store carbon through cover crops mulching no till again we if you have more question we can go into this more in detail uh shifting consumption patterns I know this can be a little bit of a prickly topic um and a little there's a lot of nuance that often gets uh overlooked but if you're looking at in terms of agricultural production in general livestock do demand more resources and
• 25:00 - 25:30 so there's some folks who would say well nobody we everybody should be vegetarians or some people would say well hey there's uh really important nutrients that if we're looking at Food security being able to get protein and and other nutrients from animal byproducts is really healthy for a healthy diet um I think most folks would agree you know having a hamburger breakfast lunch and dinner seven days a week is not a healthy sustainable lifestyle um so looking at reducing consumption of meat or higher um
• 25:30 - 26:00 resource intensive products especially you know beef being one of the primary ones is one component methane digestors we're taking manure from cattle uh specifically right and putting it into a chamber that instead of off gasing methane emissions then turns into a a an energy source um so you could get energy to power a house to cook with things like that um from a form of a gas so improve nutrient management um so examples in terms of what you're feeding cattle uh there's
• 26:00 - 26:30 been a lot of research that goes into how do you feed cattle different things that would reduce methane emissions so um oops pardon me there's also on these sorts of governmental like there's agricultural level there's governmental um there's multilateral organizations so there's lots of organizations that are involved in sorts of policy and I want to give you one thing in particular um as we walk away that okay if we're not specifically working in these areas what's one thing that we can be doing so how much food is thrown out in the United States do you
• 26:30 - 27:00 think and I'll give you a hint this is um food that's thrown out either by individuals people or restaurants stores things like that grocery stores so this is kind of like post consumer typically um what percentage of food do you think is thrown out in the United States okay wow you all are good 30 to 40 perc right that is the correct answer um here we go that's our our leaderboard congratulations I'm will give you a I
• 27:00 - 27:30 don't know an electric car or something um this so but as we look at 30 to 40% of the food being produced it's great if we can put a whole lot of research into produ identifying hey if we can make changes in the diet of dairy cattle that will reduce methane emissions like that is fantastic but if I'm G to dump a third of my milk down the drain because it goes bad before I eat it or I'm going to scrape a third of my burger and then put it in the trash because um I just didn't feel like eating it right like
• 27:30 - 28:00 this is something uh if you look at project draw down is a is a uh a resource that's been compiled looking at how did what are some actionable steps to uh look at addressing climate change um this is one of those ways we reducing food waste so I think that's something that you know kind of what can we do what like well this is this is one thing that all of us can do today right is this going to solve everything absolutely not um so uh other ways that you can take action to mitigate the effects on climate change um I've got
• 28:00 - 28:30 this question here and oh pardon me I'm actually um we'll maybe if we get a chance we'll we'll get to that later but I want to make sure we get a chance to uh talk hear from Dr Scott so we looked at these questions what's climate change what's the relationship between climate change and food security and how can we respond to the impacts of climate change on food security so we went through a lot quickly um but now I think we are very fortunate to have uh Dr Chris Scott with us so Dr Chris Scott is the Maurice K Goddard chair of Forestry and Environmental Conservation at Penn State
• 28:30 - 29:00 University he's an interdisciplinary scholar working on climate resilience social ecological systems water security and the water energy and food Nexus so he's here now at Penn State has worked in Academia for quite a few years but before that also worked for NOS governmental agencies and applied research institutes contributing to Environmental Policy formulation and implementation in the in the US and globally so Chris thank you so much for being here with us thank you it's really
• 29:00 - 29:30 a great pleasure to uh be with you let me just ask whether my um uh slide shows on in full screen mode yes we can we can see it that's great okay wonderful um first let me just say I'm sorry to hear that uh Gordon Conway passed away I did have the chance to do some fieldwork with him when I was a master's student uh doing a practice called participatory rural appraisals you may have seen these These are um engaged stakeholder based uh mapping exercises where resources are in uh rural locations but also uh crop
• 29:30 - 30:00 calendars timing climate change was just making sort of a uh you know an entry in terms of recognition for Agricultural Development internationally this was some work in in in India so um he was absolutely right in the statement you put up that uh climate change both is an impact on but also receives impacts from um agriculture um but again sorry to hear that he passed away um thanks very much Professor habashi Noel for um queuing us up that was a really great talk to um go through uh a lot of the
• 30:00 - 30:30 details of those three main components of your talk um and and then some clear examples and a very nice interactive way with slido and other things to to do this um I'm going to focus as much on that third box about what are some steps that we can do both in the adaptation and mitigation space that you referred to in the last couple of um slides but I'm going to be talking a little bit about um how agriculture in its relation to climate change is also linked to at
• 30:30 - 31:00 least two other major um resource use practices and even economic sectors those being water and you talked about that with um irrigation and irrigation practices but also the way agricultural land use affects Water Systems Rivers watersheds and things like that both in quantity and quality and then the other one is um energy and you talked about um the role and the impact of Agriculture both with carbon generation but the energy use with within um agriculture so let's just um step right into this um I
• 31:00 - 31:30 take a systems approach I'm a systems thinker um there's a lot of system science that goes into addressing questions like these uh you referred to um uh Wicked problems things where very large mechanisms of interaction across time and space with many different factors make um uh complex systems difficult to both manage um but even to you know predict from a scientific perspective um so I take as Food Systems not just the agricultural production storage
• 31:30 - 32:00 handling of of food but even things of distribution marketing consumption you talked about waste uh there's an important role for recycling and not just say well you could look at it as waste and and recycling material clearly we don't want to get it to to waste um but but even if we do there are mechanisms for for recycling but but in a much broader perspective agriculture in relation to to um climate change is is tied to land use soils they practices of Forestry and AGR forestry that may not be food production uh directly but
• 32:00 - 32:30 but that relate to Agriculture and Forestry and uh water and water quality I'm going to come back to that again because the climate impacts that you showed on those uh countries across not the equatorial region but just to the north and if there was land mass just to the South you would have seen probably some of the same things um in relation to for instance the Sahel or parts of Central America and and other places like that these are affected by processes on planet Earth in in their
• 32:30 - 33:00 locations um with latitudes and longitudes and so the water quality drought uh Cycles are critically important we're in an El Nino year this year youve probably heard of some of that and we could come back to review some of that as well uh Noel referred to land use conversions that's critically important it may not be part of food production directly but clearly land clearing in which then agriculture is uh the primary activity that goes into deforested areas and and crop agriculture but animal agriculture um clearly a very important part of uh of
• 33:00 - 33:30 the climate system and the climate cycles and that all brings us to carbon and carbon emissions I think this is our biggest challenge that we actually have as as as as Humanity on the planet is really to try to address um our our our carbon use our carbon budgets um and so it doesn't surprise me and I put myself too that uh extremely to very worried about climate and the climate Futures that we're looking at on the planet and so this all ties into the climate system so again um agriculture is both related to has impacts on but
• 33:30 - 34:00 impacts from on the climate system let's just think about uh a longer term perspective where it's not just uh you know short-term actions but this longer Cradle to grave life cycle kind of an approach and if we think about food security we also have to think about these much broader approaches that extend over time and space and other resources or sectors uh like we're talking about for food systems related to things like energy water and other things other examples of this uh exist already um and I also saw some of these
• 34:00 - 34:30 on the on the prior slides integrated Pest Management integrated Water Resources management and then from a more uh academic perspective of studying but then also tying into management and policy to make changes in practices are things like social ecological systems and at the third uh sorry at the bottom of the of of the slide I'm putting up um this idea of the water energy food Nexus um and sometimes I've done talks like this where I actually get to and have hands a show of hands and ask how many are you how many of you are familiar
• 34:30 - 35:00 with the water energy food Nexus so I won't be able to get a poll right now um but I wanted to step through with you what that really is and what that means so water energy and food are critically important we're talking about climate and uh and agriculture here but we're also really looking at the interplay between water energy and food these are interdependent in uh as as resource used practices but also at the level of policy and decision-making but also in this broader concept of security we really understand food security because you've done a deep dive on that in the seminar series but there's also very
• 35:00 - 35:30 well Advanced ideas and practices to pursue energy security food security water security and climate security as well here are some examples of this interplay of water energy and food looking for these uh uh Nexus types of interactions groundwater pumping and for irrigation we're going to come back to that that's use of energy to pump water out of the ground and fly it to crops to produce food there's clearly water energy food right there um I've done a lot of work in mountain river systems with hydrop power generation and the
• 35:30 - 36:00 hydr power dams might also be used for irrigation but when hydrop power is produced often you're running the water managing the water uh changing its course of flow into um some of the equipment the turbines and other kinds of things in a way that isn't beneficial for irrigation irrigation often uh you know gets a negative gets the second shrift gets a second set of priorities uh in some of those hydropower types of systems but also Greenhouse agriculture at a very more microscale than in large systems um you can have Greenhouse production you're managing energy you're
• 36:00 - 36:30 managing temperature you're managing humidity you're managing nutrients and things all for the intensification of Agriculture with water energy and food right there in the same mix uh wastewater treatment we talked a little bit about that from the Waste Recovery it's not just food and food landfills and food waste um which is clearly an important process too but a lot of waste products and a lot of carbon comes back into aquatic systems by the way we release uh Wastewater and big cities uh that are growing rapidly some without adequate uh sanitation treatment of
• 36:30 - 37:00 sewage water uh sometimes that water comes right back and I've done some work in uh in in sewage farming or agriculture using Wastewater and impaired Quality Water uh biofuel sometimes uh we're producing biofuels rather than food so that's also a trade-off uh in in cases where we're looking at food and energy uh links and so this resource Nexus which is more the the footprint kind of an approach of how many gallons of water does it take to to grow an almond and some of you have seen those kinds of coefficients or or something is considered to be uh you know neutral net net net zero uh and I
• 37:00 - 37:30 did want to just make a plug to all of you that uh Net Zero carbon is no longer an adequate strategy we very much need to be net negative we really have to be doing full-on draw down so it's not just enough to say let's get more uh conservative with our use of carbon for instance in food production systems or other activities that we have we really actually have to be uh doing full draw down because there's already too much atmospheric uh CO2 but also the other greenhouse gases that we talked about and I think also from a broader policy
• 37:30 - 38:00 perspective we really do have to think how uh Food Systems but linked to climate and also water and energy in the talk I'm giving to here are tied into institutions policies ways of government laws and even informal practices um so here here's some uh uh prospective work that I did back in 2015 at the United Nations University there's a whole Institute in Dresden Germany that's co-supported by the government of Germany and the United Nations University system called unu Dresden and I gave a a plenary talk uh back in 2015
• 38:00 - 38:30 saying how you approach Food Systems Energy Systems and Water Systems in a global uh um change and and climate change adaptation perspective very much uh is is influenced by your perspectives which sector you may work in what your training is as as a scientist or a scholar or an undergraduate student as well um and how you view issues and problems across the different um uh points of this of this Nexus triangle is
• 38:30 - 39:00 is is critically important but more generally I think we understand that water energy and food are critical for human well-being uh critically important for resilient ecosystems and we have to live within our means this idea of planetary boundaries there is no Planet B we can't just trash planet Earth and and and move to Mars and and and and and keep going that's that's just not uh an option and technologically speaking even if it were uh you know it's it's it's not not something that uh I I think humanity is uh is is needs to be
• 39:00 - 39:30 considering as the Escape valve so we really do have to work within the means that we have look at the interplay of these uh resources but apply institutions policies uh and and and and that can also be from Civil Society non-governmental organizations Farmers associations energy and water users groups as well as Citizens to really build this idea of of human and environmental security um a little bit of background um the idea is not new it actually came out in the 80s and 1990s of different Nexus Arrangements I have got a whole talk on what else is being
• 39:30 - 40:00 understood in Nexus terms it's a it is a term that that's gotten more currency um you know as as uh as as we go along Society the news media others really understand sort of these Nexus inter link set of relationships but from the water energy and Food Perspectives 2015 was a critically important year that was the year that the global Community passes sustainable development goals took over from something called the Millennium development goals that ended in 2015 and so the global Community passed and the United Nations system uh
• 40:00 - 40:30 and there's very a lot of you would know and probably are working with um some of those sdgs the sustainable development goals but it's also critically important that 2015 was the year right after the Fukushima nuclear uh disaster where uh tsunami hit a nuclear reactor in Japan uh and that Unleashed a whole set of questions about our Energy System and human environmental impacts of energy choices that we have including in uh carbon- free energy that is nuclear and I think we really have to look very
• 40:30 - 41:00 carefully from a disaster risk resilience perspective about some of the options associated with energy Pathways and energy transitions but that was also a 2015 um uh framework year uh for for the sendi framework 2015 was also the year that the global Community passed the Paris climate Accord with a lot of the nationally determined targets and adaptation resilience plans that are coming out of that and continuing to to to to be important so so 2015 is is going to be looked at um you know continuing uh into the future back uh as
• 41:00 - 41:30 as a as as as a signature in a milestone year I wanted to give you a couple of examples we don't have a lot of time here um so I do want to run to True of them fairly quickly I've done a lot of work on agricultural irrigation using groundwater that's again applying energy to pump groundwater to irrigate crops that's a water energy food Nexus and in this climate um context in fact one of the papers that I have as as a publishing author uh is the water energy food climate Nexus because climate is critically important um in that I've done some work and I'm show that from Mexico I've worked on that in other
• 41:30 - 42:00 places as well in India locations in Africa and Arizona um and a new kind of angle on that that I'm working on with some graduate students here and had the chance to go and look at some field projects around solar irrigation so you're not using carbon sources of energy you're using solar energy to do pumping um groundwater is critically important because it is the the Water Resource of U of of of primary recourse what I mean by that is it has taken over surface water which is from dams and rivers and and lakes and other sources of water on the surface surface water
• 42:00 - 42:30 bodies as uh humans uh primary source of of of of water supply for drinking for agriculture for a whole range of other activities we have collectively pumped enough groundwater that our satellites in orbit can measure changes in Earth's gravitational field Yes you heard me say that we are moving enough groundwater that we are changing the spin of planet Earth we are very gradually speeding up the the length of each day's rotation around our axis because we've
• 42:30 - 43:00 moved so much groundwater out of the Earth where does that groundwater go it gets applied to crops mostly but it goes into urban systems and other kinds of um things it gets evaporated out into the atmosphere it causes it changes it affects local weather practices and ultimately that water also goes back into the oceans and we are able to measure ocean sea level rise as in millimetric terms but still discern rise of sea level associated with how much ground water we've pumped out of
• 43:00 - 43:30 the ground on the Earth's terrestrial system and that flows down then through the both the rivers but through the atmospheric pathway into the ocean so humans are the anthropos driver we are physically changing and of course for biosystems uh biodiversity and other purposes as well we are drastically changing uh the Earth system so agriculture is at the core of of groundwater use and groundwater pumping and we'll do a deep dive into that um I also wanted to share some remarks with you uh on some approaches that Penn State but other partners are doing as well at looking at Food Systems from
• 43:30 - 44:00 this water energy and food Nexus perspective in a climate change uh and climate adaptation perspective but also very linked to Community Development kind of with that sdgs sustainable development goals Target um we've got some activities going on with the National Science Foundation support in Africa we've done some work with these Collaborative Learning schools of young scholars practitioners farmers and others in Uganda and Morocco other African countries as well we're doing the next one here in Pennsylvania and Maryland uh for the ches Peake Bay um focusing water energy
• 44:00 - 44:30 food food production systems but around a question like to Chesapeake Bay uh and also tied in with the European Union if anybody's interested there's the website um and also just to um share with you that uh um a couple of projects that we're developing including where uh n habashi and some others uh that you've heard from in this seminar series are involved in Colombia and I'll quickly go through some of those so let's just do a really quick um dive this is part of a scientific paper I'm not going to go into all of this but many of you would recognize the outlines of Mexico um as a
• 44:30 - 45:00 country the blue um and and and yellow areas are are are ones that have lighter amounts of of of of water use but the red areas have extremely intense uh ground water use for agricultural purposes this is just how Mexico parses out its water on a water rights entitling system Mexico had some interesting uh Innovations back in 2004 introduced nighttime electricity Supply charged farmers less for that because the generating capacity could provide them cheaper power at night and the Hope
• 45:00 - 45:30 was that farmers would replace daytime power with nighttime power unfortunately what you saw was the total sum of the white bars which is the daytime power being used and the black part of the bar that gray part of the bar that is the nighttime power used total Supply just kept going up there's an insatiable demand for groundwater now some states got it right uh and and actually were able to bring that down and implemented some practices not just with uh rights and titling but on the ground practices for for efficiency measures and other
• 45:30 - 46:00 kinds of things but to show you how electricity is so important to agricultural operations when it comes to pumping groundwater to irrigate crops that then is partly uh as as as n pointed out part of our adaptation uh portfolio of what we can do better irrigation and efficiency types of practices so we looked at what would be some of the policy interventions associated with pricing that electricity better if you could actually uh pass some um uh some some laws and policies that would would charge uh Farmers better for Reliable power not just for
• 46:00 - 46:30 an amount of power but to have it at better timing to have it a better quality of Supply so that their equipment wouldn't burn out and other things that really is part of a problem what you can see here is the acers get face a greater degree of depletion if you just let the business's usual electricity Supply go forward whereas in the past in the last chart this is if you're you're trying to use some pricing and some other tools to to to focus some behavior and improve that you actually improve the outcomes of the aquifer themselves in addition to uh getting better Farm productivity and some better
• 46:30 - 47:00 um responses so this raises some broader questions across the country of Mexico and we've done studies like this in other locations as well is what about the the volume rights uh you know isn't isn't sort of water rights and water titling and and and water Administration isn't that the answer don't don't don't talk about pipes and pumps just pass the laws and and and put in the regulations and and some of the bans well none of that really works because what you see is all the big pumping States Chihuahua Guan Sonora chuaa and other big states in Mexico that use a lot of groundwater
• 47:00 - 47:30 way above that dotted line which means they should be after below that line uh in terms of how much they pump compared to what they're titled to pump right so they're all pumping more than their titled so you do have to start looking into the titling system so some of the findings here and maybe some of the take-homes are the rapid electrification around the world not just in Mexico or the United States has really changed food commodity production but also food commodity demand because now we've got better control over our water supplies you can now do export oriented agriculture this is where this idea of virtual water comes in we grow crops in
• 47:30 - 48:00 Mexico because they get exported to the United States or to Europe or to Japan or China and so the consumers in in those locations of that produce are kind of consuming Mexico's water right I mean that virtual water of my demand is here for the product but but the the water use took place in another location so you also have to start looking at maybe some some rules of of Regulation around some of that um now conversely electric power supply and pricing can be key to profit able agriculture but also done in a way that needs to make sure that the power um utilities the companies that
• 48:00 - 48:30 Supply the power are are are are managing pretty well and so instead of Rec carbonizing which unfortunately is happening in Mexico and a lot of places uh including in in Pennsylvania with a lot of our activity um with uh with with gas development means I think we really have to start looking for economic Pathways going forward that that make a break from Economic Development with with carbon there's a lot of uh content and details here let me pass quickly to to Colombia sorry if you can't see this very well but this is the climate map the United Nations framework convention
• 48:30 - 49:00 uh for climate change setup the ipcc the intergovernmental panel on climate change process you can go and get um climate system reports and other kinds of things this being an elino year and Columbia is kind of one of these ones right at the intersection of three main uh climate regimes the Northwestern South America the northern South America and the Caribbean system I won't go into that in in a lot of detail but we've got four really interesting projects using this water energy food Nexus approach to try to look at climate at ation in a community development um perspective so one is in the high Petland areas of the
• 49:00 - 49:30 high mountain Andes uh that then also are the water towers that bring water down into urban areas and and farms and other places we got an interdisciplinary team of of of scientists students and others from a range of different partners again happy to provide you details it's U uh and something that I could uh provide further detail on I've been involved in this particular one which is a a glacier dominated system right at the high mountain peaks of the Andes and yet that climate change is rapidly melting those glaciers out and now the Water Supplies coming down into
• 49:30 - 50:00 the rivers are changing in their timing and their frequency and other kinds of things that really alter the way agricultural users of water irrigation systems and the ecosystems of course too are are are are getting used to to that water so we had an earlier phase of that and here's some of me and my team working on some of those uh in the northern uh Caribbean area of Columbia the third project is an off-grid island system with smallscale agriculture uh us using crops but actually the big part of the Food Systems there is fish fish which are caught um you know in in in
• 50:00 - 50:30 the Caribbean there um but then also what about um The energy used for cold storage and and for processing and other kinds of things um and again here's our our team of Partners from Penn State University but also some of the uh National Partners there in in Colombia and the third one which is the fourth one which is very useful and interesting for this um is uh the guira uh department and here you're going to see Professor habashi right there is one of our team members working on this and this is a extremely Aid area though you think of the Caribbean as being Lush and
• 50:30 - 51:00 tropical parts of it are very very dry very Aid Thorn scrub kind of uh thing you can't really produce agriculture without without irrigation and there isn't good electricity Supply so they're using some solar panels to to really try to look at at at a sustainable use of of the Region's resources and here's some some some of the kinds of examples so the solar panels up above of the fields you can see just by the soil and the kind of Fairly dry vegetation that that it is a semi- desert kind of an area um but you know there there is some water underground and so uh local community
• 51:00 - 51:30 members the kids here really having a lot of fun with some of this uh but you know there's the technology involved in the systems design and other kinds of things that's all I have to share I hope I've left enough time for some Q&A and maybe we can get some good Q&A going uh by looking at what's coming in on the on the on the on the the the zoom Channel there so I'll stop sharing here and we can try to take some Q&A thanks so much Chris um so we have a few questions in the Q&A section if you want to add other questions too if we get the chance to we also have some questions that were submitted beforehand um so maybe it's
• 51:30 - 52:00 worth clarifying here so one question was are we physically losing water from the earth entirely so you're talking about water movement but maybe are we losing water entirely from the earth not from the total Planet system so there's no Vapor that is escaping to Outer Space if that was the question but I think maybe your question is are we losing water from the landbased portion of the planet into the the ocean and that is correct we are we're dewatering especially our
• 52:00 - 52:30 aquifers aquifers are in Decline all around the world in the United States we think of it as a western problem California Arizona New Mexico Utah the Arid southwestern part of the country has pumped groundwater for a long time some of you would have heard of the ogalala aquafer that runs through parts of Oklahoma Texas even down into Arkansas uh and and and some of the middle parts of the Southern parts of the United States that AC is in Decline and we just saw last week two weeks ago
• 52:30 - 53:00 uh uh honestly a pretty worrying uh set of uh stories that looked at Satellite measurements of topography what's the actual land surface elevation and the East Coast which we don't associate with being a big groundwater user is also slowly losing some of its water and when we use the water and we lose the water we often have a problem called called subsidence and what that means is the land starts collapsing it it settles
• 53:00 - 53:30 down on itself because the water that used to be down there to withstand the poor pressure it's called and the structure of the Rocks now is empty there's Caverns down there there's gaps and spaces in the rocks and the sand and that gradually starts to collapse and that's an irreversible phenomenon you can't pump water back into the atmosphere back into the aquifer the underground water body and somehow pump the surface back up You've Lost That storage and in California and Arizona where I was before I came to Penn State it's a big problem because part of your
• 53:30 - 54:00 land settles a little bit more than the other part and then the roads crack and buildings crack and other things while the whole thing is going down part of it going down a little bit faster and you can see drastic pictures of the Central Valley of California if you don't believe it look at telephone pole Heights like literally 30 foot height that's how much the land has subsided or collapsed in in the last couple decades thank you um so you've you've worked in policy in a couple of different
• 54:00 - 54:30 capacities so there's one question what country has the most Progressive approaches to solving these challenges and where does the US government sit in comparison so um I would say that the most Progressive and visible example of climate adaptation around this water energy Food Systems approaches is Australia partly Australia is a leader because they've faced problem so severely for so long the problems and challenges in Australia which by and
• 54:30 - 55:00 large is a uh a semi-arid country with water scarcity and yet a large agricultural base there's area of Northern uh Australia that that are more tropical and are fairly well water endowed but the the classic river system called the Murray darling Basin it's two rivers called the Murray and the darling they come together in the Murray darling Basin and Australia has been very Progressive in its in its uh climate adaptation and and its Agriculture and water U perspective they've done that not simply because they've got
• 55:00 - 55:30 enlightened leadership I think we have good vision and Leadership uh in this uni in in the United States around this the issue and challenge in the United States is as much that we have a lot of popular push back so the government has less ability to implement public sector types of programs uh though incentives are there and so forth now within the United States water is actually managed and agriculture is managed at a state level sure this is the US da the Department of Agriculture and programs and farm bill money that comes in but really the ability to adapt to these
• 55:30 - 56:00 challenges in the United States is primarily done at a state level California is Progressive to a certain degree but for the same reason like I mentioned for Cal for Australia it backs against the wall and it better get more Progressive because it's its numbers are are are are are are are bad are severe um in terms of a developing country context there's some very interesting examples in places like Tunisia um there's very interesting examples in Southeast Asia in Thailand um so yeah there are bright spots all around the
• 56:00 - 56:30 world and it's hard for me to say here's number one and you know some some other country experiences at the bottom of the list because it it kind of depends what question you're asking but thank you for that policy is super important yeah thanks so a couple questions came up how feasible is desalinization uh as a viable water source very good and just a very quick usern terminology soil gets salinized and so you desalinized soils but water is salinated and so you desalinate
• 56:30 - 57:00 anyhow that's just a point the the the correct term is to desalinate water or desalination systems desalinization sometimes comes in but that's really a process that applies to getting salt out of soils um desalinating water is very clearly a practice it's practiced all over the world especially in energy rich and therefore energy cheap I mean low cost uh in the Middle East where water scarcity is also a problem we talked about katar for for instance Qatar is uh got it's Qatar has the highest percentage of its total water supply
• 57:00 - 57:30 coming from desalinated water desalination is basically taking either sea water or if you can find Inland water groundwater that that that may be less salty there's something called brackish groundwater you can't drink it directly but it's less salty than the than the ocean water and then there's some water that's even more salty than the ocean water like the salt and sea or um in in California and Mexico um the Basin part is in Mexico but the salt and seas in California or or you saw those Lakes down there in um uh in Death Valley so we we we we do membrane
• 57:30 - 58:00 processes and so forth It's still very expensive and not simply that it has a cost the energy that goes into it is very largely still fossil energy you can do uh solar based desalination the technology exists but you require so much energy that often it's still on conventional energy this brings in an idea and I don't want to make it too complicated but following on um no's talk about adaptation there's also a concept called maladaptation some irrigation is maladaptive which means we
• 58:00 - 58:30 think we're adapting yes we're adapting to higher temperatures but in the long run we're dewatering the aquifer and we're we're we're ruining ecosystem so have we really adapted well sorry your short-term adaptation got you uh in a worst place further down but desalination is a practice so far desalination is not cost uh accessible for routine farming operations so I've seen some good desalination uh in of agricultural crops in Jordan but where they're high valued crops uh and the
• 58:30 - 59:00 they do the packaging on site they even put the barcodes on they go straight to European supermarkets they're capturing the value chain and as a result they can pay for their desalination of water if you just ask a routine farmer even in California or Texas who's growing basic you know grain commodity kind of things or or or pasture grass for for for for cattle and other kinds of things like that there's no way that you can pay for desalination of irrigation water is just too expensive okay I'm going to give you the lightning round because I think we have
• 59:00 - 59:30 one minute okay um there's a couple questions about GMOs and agroecology two easy to sum up questions but what are your thoughts in terms of GMOs or agroecology in addressing climate change and agriculture go yeah so GMOs is just a I mean there's a whole topic there but it's an accelerated process of actually genetic modification of the organisms sence genetically modified organisms keep in mind that farmers and human beings as a civilization have been selecting for traits and crops forever
• 59:30 - 60:00 that's why we have certain varieties of apples that are different from another variety of apples or different from apples in another place right so selection of genetic Pro uh qualities that are expressed genetically is a process that's going on the difference with GMOs is that we are literally changing genetic structure through uh modification of of of organisms to Bear those traits now forever my my problem with genetic modification of organisms is where it goes in tandem with other
• 60:00 - 60:30 practices like fertilizers that need to be used with that GMO modified um uh food product um and so GMO has its has its has its pluses but on my side it really has a lot of the negatives on the balances agroecology is much more of a broad systems based approach where you're trying to conduct agricultural practice in consonance with with ecological principles and and minimize the impacts there both of those were not well
• 60:30 - 61:00 anwered well Fout replies probably because they're big huge topics and I wish I had more chance to think about them but thank you for raising them and that that was that was mean on my part to give you those two questions with very limited time um but thank you Dr Scott I mean it really is a privilege to have you here and just to gain your insights here um and if you are thinking wow I wish we could dig into this more I think we mentioned this last time guess what you are in luck because uh Friday
• 61:00 - 61:30 March 29th the last Friday of March and Friday April 26 the last Friday of April we have two more sessions looking at gender and Global Food Security on the 29th of March and government and Global Food Security on uh the last Friday of April there's a link in the chat there um the recordings from this session uh maybe some slide notes if they're available things like that will all be posted to this website as well there's a registration link so if you somebody gave you the link and you want to be register in order to be able to get
• 61:30 - 62:00 updates and things please go ahead and register if you haven't done so already um or feel free to share it if if there's other folks that you think would benefit from this so thank you all very much for joining us thank you Dr Scott and uh we will look forward to seeing you in a month time in uh the end of March have a wonderful day take care all thank you for the invitation it's my pleasure to be with you