Course description
Food, water, and energy (FWE) are boundary conditions for global security and sustainable development. All three resources are imperiled at a time when many living systems are declining at an accelerating rate. Our quality of life depends on designing and implementing sustainable solutions to the FWE crisis, especially as sustainable development goals (SDGs) largely depend on those solutions. This course examines the FWE nexus through interdependent analysis and the use of integrated health and economic assessment methods. The impact of climate change on the FWE security nexus is a core theme, as are the strains placed on the FWE nexus by skyrocketing global population growth and the irreversible population shift to urban centers. The course considers how natural resource planning and management paradigms have to adjust to the risks of imbalance that threaten food and water security for the poor across the globe. Both country and project case studies are used to assess the environmental impacts of investment decisions in the agriculture, water, and energy sectors. The course includes a simulation of an environmental policy problem involving food security with water and energy dimensions. The full class is involved in the simulation.
