July 11th – July 15th
Lecturer in charge of the module Prof. Paolo D’Odorico (University of California, Berkeley) paolododo@berkeley.edu
Deadline for the single course enrolment: July 6th
Module Learning Objectives and Skill Acquisition
This module includes three parts and a conclusion. The first part concentrates on the food-water nexus, including the way the food and water systems work and are connected. The lectures will present drivers and processes underlying the water-food nexus, identify consumption trends and patterns of food and water redistribution.
The second part will look at socio-environmental impacts of ongoing changes in global agriculture, including the effects of land use change and water withdrawals on environment and society.
The third part of the course will focus on climate change and its impacts in water and food security.
We will use a “flip-the-classroom” approach with students gaining first exposure to new material before coming to class, usually via reading or videos. Most lectures will be a combination of formal lecture followed by student presentations and in-class discussion of the reading assignments.
Detailed Teaching Agenda
Part I: Food-Energy-Water Nexus
| Lecture topic | Lecturer | Hours |
| Introduction to food and water security and the food-water nexus | D'Odorico | 1.5 |
| Global demand of food and water resources. Trends in population, diets, and consumption patterns. . The challenge of feeding the planet. Water sustainability. Ecological and water footprints | D'Odorico | 1.5 |
| Food and nutrition security. Indicators to measure healthy diets. | Tuninetti | 1.5 |
| Readings on Sustainability and Population | D'Odorico | 1.5 |
| Agricultural production. What is required to grow crops? The green revolution. Yield and harvest gap in agriculture. Gender gap. Intensification vs Agricultural expansion. Impacts on water resources. How many people can the planet feed? | D'Odorico | 1.5 |
| Water Resources. Water use for agriculture. Irrigation systems. Groundwater depletion, Sustainable water use. Water security. Water scarcity: Definitions, patterns, drivers, and societal impacts; Impacts of climate change on water resources and agriculture; Water infrastructure. Large-scale water projects. Water and agricultural development. Water and conflict or cooperation? | D'Odorico | 1.5 |
| Flipped class (I): knowledge from data. Supervised exploration of relevant database pertaining to the water-food nexus: e.g., the food dashboard, water footprint network, earthSTAT for nitrogen flows, TRASE, FAOSTAT, EAT-Lancet. | Tuninetti | 1.5 |
| Readings on Agriculture and Water Resources | Tuninetti | 1.5 |
Part II: Socio-environmental impacts of ongoing changes in global agriculture
| Lecture topic | Lecturer | Hours |
| Meat consumption. Livestock production and the demand for meat and other animal products. Livestock revolution. Trends in human diets. Feed-fed vs rangeland production. Fish consumption. Collapse of capture marine fisheries? Aquaculture. Hydrological implications. | D'Odorico | 1.5 |
| Globalization. Effect of trade on food systems. Economic drivers of trade dependency. Recent history of food trade. Virtual water, virtual land, and virtual nitrogen. Trade and food shocks. Human displacement of land use. Exportation of environmental impacts. Unsustainable virtual water trade. | D'Odorico | 1.5 |
| SSPs scenarios of population, GDP, diets. RCPs scenarios of crop yield and cultivated area. Coupling SSP and RCP (mitigation). Can population be fed in the future? Future scenarios of food trade. Will globalization increase in order to fill the gap between production and demand? What countries will become key players in the future market? | Tuninetti | 1.5 |
| Readings on Globalization and Livestock Production. | D'Odorico | 1.5 |
| Environmental impacts of agriculture. Land use change, deforestation and land degradation. Forest transition. Land governance. | D'Odorico | 1.5 |
| Farming systems. Small-scale/subsistence vs large-scale commercial farming. Organic or conventional agriculture? Cash crops vs staple crops. Monocultures. Industrialization of farming systems. Agroecology, conservation agriculture and sustainable agriculture. | D'Odorico | 1.5 |
| Flipped class (II-learning from I): finding out the synergies and trade-off of the food system thoguh data. The problem of balancing food supply, impacts on water resources, environmental impacts on natural resources (e.g., planetary boundaries), economic value of food, nutritional value. Addressing multiple SDGs goals. | Tuninetti | 1.5 |
| Readings on Deforestation and Farming Systems. | Tuninetti | 1.5 |
Part III: Human appropriation of natural resources: Water and food security
| Lecture topic | Lecturer | Hours |
| Nexus between the Human Rights to Food and Water. Human appropriation of water resources and the challenge of meeting both human and environmental needs. | D'Odorico | 1.5 |
| Human appropriation of land and water resources. Water acquisitions and water grabs. The financialization of water in agriculture. | D'Odorico | 1.5 |
| Agricultural adaptation to climate change. IoT, critical role of farmers, anticipation of climate-related impacts, virtuous examples. | Tuninetti | 1.5 |
| Readings on Human Rights, Food Security, Commodification. | D'Odorico | 1.0 |
| Conclusions. | D'Odorico & Tuninetti | 0.5 |
Assessment and grading
Every day a group of about 4 students will lead the discussion of relevant readings based on scholarly literature and research reports (selected by the instructors). These students will make power point presentation of the readings and ask a few questions to start the in-class discussion. All students in the class need to read the articles or reports and think of 1-2 non-trivial questions per reading that will also be asked during the discussion. These questions should show that students have read the materials and identified some interesting points. Grading: will be based on clarity of presentation (25%); insightfulness of the presentation (35%); ability to lead an engaging class discussion (25%); class participation in the course of the week (15%).
ECTS: 3
Hours of lecture: 30