Dear Colleagues:
I don't have as much time and expertise to contribute to this discussion compared to others (e.g. sustainable food systems). However, before it closes, I would like to offer a few points for your consideration:
- There is growing attention being paid to the "food/energy/water nexus". The discourse around all three tends to be similar. On the one hand, there is concern around "shortages". However, upon closer scrutiny, we have plenty of food, water and energy for the earth's current population (and many demographers are now challenging the "reaching 9B" hypothesis due to low birthrates around the world) but there are issues around access, storage, etc. I'm told one of the British research funding agencies had a "sandpit" on the food-energy-water nexus. I would be curious what came out of that exercise. Usually these "sandpits" bring together the world's top experts in a field.
- What is the right balance between attention to mitigation versus adaptation when it comes to climate change? How much effort and for what expected gain do we focus on one versus the other in various situations. In Canada, most of which is cold, there is already attention being paid into the impact of climate change of bringing more land into the productive sphere due to global warming. Small pacific islands, on the other hand, face potential obliteration.
- Finally, let us not place so much attention on agricultural production at the expense of examining the impacts of other aspects of the value chain. As Nicolas Bricas at CIRAD has shown, one of the biggest GHG emitting activities in the food system is consumers driving to the grocery store to fetch groceries! See my recent op-ed on feeding the world available at: http://www.ipolitics.ca/2014/11/28/malthus-revisited-can-the-planet-sup…;
Thanks for allowing me to participate. I look forward to learning about the outcome of this process.
Gisèle Yasmeen (most publications available at giseleyasmeen.com and LinkedIn)
Dr. Gisèle Yasmeen