Musings on sustainable food systems, agriculture vs. agroecology, and more!
I’m just back from the most inspiring event and am desperate to recap before I forget anything important. I uploaded enough TED talks here that you should be familiar with the format, but for those of you who don’t know, TED conferences are dedicated to “ideas worth spreading” surrounding a particular topic. TEDx events are … Continue reading Recap: TEDxUppsala University (Theme: Resilience)
Environmental economics might be one of the most curious and demanding disciplines, since it tries to combine two fields at the opposite ends of the ideological spectrum – environmentalists on the one hand and economists on the other, the one trying to preserve every last bug for the benefits of biodiversity while the others coolly … Continue reading Is Taxing Meat a Viable Green Policy Option?
The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) recently wrote two blog posts about one of their papers called “The Roles of Livestock in Developing Countries“, in which their authors argue that the livestock sector needs to be studied and assessed in a much more disaggregated manner in order to acknowledge the roles and impacts of livestock … Continue reading Livestock: The Good, the Bad, and the Facts
In my Sustainability Economics class, we also talked about sustainable food choices (one of my favorite topics!) and the nuts and bolts of doing a Life Cycle Analysis of a particular product or diet “from cradle to grave”. Life Cycle Analyses try to assess the environmental impacts of certain behavior, for example the consumption of … Continue reading Can the Mediterranean Diet Save the Planet?
In preparation for my Sustainability Economics exam on Thursday, I decided to combine the necessary with the fun and write about a concept that I will hopefully remember come Thursday – the Planetary Boundary framework championed by Johan Rockström from the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Rockström starts with arguing that the planet has moved into the … Continue reading Transgressing the Earth's Boundaries
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjtIl5B1zXI] This is an interesting take on the interplay between food production and climate change. The video defines a ‘safe space’ defined by the boundaries on how much food we need, how much food we can produce at given levels of climate change, and how that increased food production will further affect climate change.
This is a great example for the fact that not all livestock is created equal – and that extensification, not intensification, of livestock production could address future land, climate and food issues concurrently.