An agenda for integrated system-wide interdisciplinary agri-food research

© 2017 The Author(s)This paper outlines the development of an integrated interdisciplinary approach to agri-food research, designed to address the ‘grand challenge’ of global food security. Rather than meeting this challenge by working in separate domains or via single-disciplinary perspectives, we chart the development of a system-wide approach to the food supply chain. In this approach, social and environmental questions are simultaneously addressed. Firstly, we provide a holistic model of the agri-food system, which depicts the processes involved, the principal inputs and outputs, the actors and the external influences, emphasising the system’s interactions, feedbacks and complexities. Secondly, we show how this model necessitates a research programme that includes the study of land-use, crop production and protection, food processing, storage and distribution, retailing and consumption, nutrition and public health. Acknowledging the methodological and epistemological challenges involved in developing this approach, we propose two specific ways forward. Firstly, we propose a method for analysing and modelling agri-food systems in their totality, which enables the complexity to be reduced to essential components of the whole system to allow tractable quantitative analysis using LCA and related methods. This initial analysis allows for more detailed quantification of total system resource efficiency, environmental impact and waste. Secondly, we propose a method to analyse the ethical, legal and political tensions that characterise such systems via the use of deliberative fora. We conclude by proposing an agenda for agri-food research which combines these two approaches into a rational programme for identifying, testing and implementing the new agri-technologies and agri-food policies, advocating the critical application of nexus thinking to meet the global food security challenge

Man and the Last Great Wilderness: Human Impact on the Deep Sea

The deep sea, the largest ecosystem on Earth and one of the least studied, harbours high biodiversity and provides a wealth of resources. Although humans have used the oceans for millennia, technological developments now allow exploitation of fisheries resources, hydrocarbons and minerals below 2000 m depth. The remoteness of the deep seafloor has promoted the disposal of residues and litter. Ocean acidification and climate change now bring a new dimension of global effects. Thus the challenges facing the deep sea are large and accelerating, providing a new imperative for the science community, industry and national and international organizations to work together to develop successful exploitation management and conservation of the deep-sea ecosystem. This paper provides scientific expert judgement and a semi-quantitative analysis of past, present and future impacts of human-related activities on global deep-sea habitats within three categories: disposal, exploitation and climate change. The analysis is the result of a Census of Marine Life – SYNDEEP workshop (September 2008). A detailed review of known impacts and their effects is provided. The analysis shows how, in recent decades, the most significant anthropogenic activities that affect the deep sea have evolved from mainly disposal (past) to exploitation (present). We predict that from now and into the future, increases in atmospheric CO2 and facets and consequences of climate change will have the most impact on deep-sea habitats and their fauna. Synergies between different anthropogenic pressures and associated effects are discussed, indicating that most synergies are related to increased atmospheric CO2 and climate change effects. We identify deep-sea ecosystems we believe are at higher risk from human impacts in the near future: benthic communities on sedimentary upper slopes, cold-water corals, canyon benthic communities and seamount pelagic and benthic communities. We finalise this review with a short discussion on protection and management methods

ICEPRO: an international collaboration effort for improving paleoclimate research in the Southern Ocean

9th SCAR Open Science Conference and XXXVI SCAR Meetings. Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. 31 July - 11 August 2020The Southern Ocean (SO) is an active regulator of global climate through its influence on the modulation of the global ocean circulation, the phytoplankton productivity as well as nutrient cycles, the transfer of energy and gas between the ocean and the atmosphere, and sea level. Despite its importance, seasonal and sparse distribution of instrumental data across the SO prevent a robust assessment of the physical and biological response and feedback on future climate change. Paleoclimate data are therefore essential to document the natural variability of environmental conditions and identify their drivers from decadal-to-millennial timescales. However, in paleoclimate studies, several questions remain unaddressed due to the lack of robust proxy calibration. While some tools are better constrained than others, the mechanisms controlling them are not fully understood. A critical step to improve their use is to conduct a systematic multi-annual collection of samples and data throughout the SO. ICEPRO has been initiated to strengthen existing collaborations and creating new connections among several partners regularly crossing through different transects the SO and who have the opportunity to sample the water column and marine sediments spanning at least the last 2,000 years. Such collaborative work could therefore cover most of the important regions of the SO, thus allowing a better monitoring of modern environmental and hydrological conditions, and ultimately improve calibration of tools commonly used for paleoreconstructions. Here we aim to present ICEPRO, its first steps and results we obtained from the last Antarctic cruises as well as our future ambitions