Research
Food and vulnerability
“…Nothing
beside
remains. Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare /
The
lone and level sands stretch far away.”
(Excerpt from Ozymandius by P. Shelley)
Moving food from farm to plate involves a complicated set of steps that often begin with an agri-food company who produces seeds or other farm inputs and ends with a consumer purchasing the ingredients for dinner.
This system requires a stable and productive environment and a stable and productive economy. Rapid climate change, soil degradation, and water shortages threaten the environment.
Rapid economic globalization may – some think – threaten the economy. So, as we face towards a future that many people fear will be full of environmental and economic surprises, we need to ask, will we survive? After all, as the poems quotes above suggests, history is littered with cultures that failed to overcome even small environmental problems. All that is left of the Maya from Central America or the Vikings from Greenland are distant echoes.
Click here for information on my research and publications dealing with food and vulnerability...
integrated Environmental Management
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” (Magaret Meade)
Most of us realize that today’s pressing sustainability problems are so complicated that that decisions makers must take a holistic and interdisciplinary approach that will engage all the potential stakeholders who may be affected by a plan. However, this is easier said than done and requires a radical reform to the ways we normally plan and develop policies.
For example, we need ways of making decisions that formally include community members along side scientists and politicians when we develop environmental management plans to guide our use of the world’s resources. These “participatory processes” can be very complicated, expensive and time consuming. There’s no guarantee that they will come up with plans that are necessarily better than if the politicians or scientists did all the planning.
Click here for information on my research and publications dealing with integrated environmental management...