Creating A Sustainable Food Future
Justice, crime prevention and the rule of law are the basis for fighting poverty and reducing inequalities while enhancing economic growth and stability, and protecting the environment. UNICRI supports governments and the international community at large in tackling criminal threats to social peace, development and political stability. As our world contends with the changing climate, we will need the best minds from across disciplines to work together to find solutions and avoid the worst outcomes. While the scale of the crisis is daunting, I have hope for what we can achieve by focusing our attention and resources on building a more sustainable future. The Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Precourt Institute for Energy will also join the school, creating an open door for faculty and students across the entire university to engage in climate and sustainability scholarship.
To address any one of these concerns requires a holistic view of the others, as they depend on one another. The language of maps, powered by technology and alive with data, can help us create solutions. Maps produced by geographic information system software serve as a framework for understanding and identifying where issues must be addressed and how they're related. Perhaps one of the greatest untapped opportunities for sustainability lies in application modernization. The energy consumption footprint of digital technology is vast—for example, running applications with Python consumes over 75 times more energy than on C. As modernizing enterprise applications becomes an increasing priority for organizations around the world, it presents a unique opportunity to create more sustainable code and coding practices.
In ecological terms, development is sustainable if the stock of natural capital does not decline over time, or if resources are managed so as to maintain a sustainable yield of ecosystem services. The economic definition defines sustainability in terms of the economy’s ability to maintain material production or consumption indefinitely. Since this is not possible without ongoing use of environmental resources, economic interpretations imply that there must be at least some degree of environmental sustainability. Environmental sustainability concerns the natural environment and how it endures and remains diverse and productive.
Additionally, the Paris Agreement aims to strengthen the ability of countries to deal with the impacts of climate change. In order to reach these goals, financing, new technology and an enhanced capacity-building framework will be put in place. The Agreement also provides for enhanced transparency of action and support through a transparency framework. Building upon the ideas of Evelyn and French minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, von Carlowitz developed the concept of managing forests for sustained yield. His work influenced others, including Alexander von Humboldt and Georg Ludwig Hartig, eventually leading to the development of the science of forestry. While the modern concept of sustainable development is derived mostly from the 1987 Brundtland Report, it is also rooted in earlier ideas about sustainable forest management and 20th-century environmental concerns.
Whether predictions from organizations such as these and others hold true is obviously to be determined, but at least they’re providing a collection of possible road maps with time for course correction. Additionally, we will only achieve the full extent of reduced climate impacts if we draw down existing carbon from the atmosphere. This can be done through greater investment in carbon capture and storage efforts, including natural climate solutions—land management strategies such as avoiding forest loss, reforestation, investments in soil health and coastal ecosystem restoration. To create our assessment of business-as-usual versus a more sustainable path, we looked at 14 measurements including temperature change, carbon dioxide levels, air pollution, water consumption, food and energy footprints, and protected areas. We've long known the importance of environmental conservation, but it's also crucial to know the locations of critical ecosystems.
Integral elements for a sustainable development are research and innovation activities. An example is the European environmental research and innovation policy, which aims at defining and implementing a transformative agenda to greening the economy and the society as a whole so to achieve sustainable development. Research and innovation in Europe is financially supported by the programme Horizon 2020. That drive can also be to protect resources and the natural environment, not just for the planet's sake but also because sustainable resources have greater longevity.A Nova Scotia seafood company uses GIS extensively in pretrip planning to pick fishing sites with precision. This work improves the company's otherwise labor-intensive and costly harvests of clams, crabs, shrimp, scallops, and lobster off the Canadian coast and ensures less disruption to the seafloor. By visualizing data on smart maps, the company makes more accurate forecasts for harvest outcomes.
If your goal is to create a more sustainable energy system, does that mean reducing carbon emissions — thus including nuclear energy — or are you referring to interoperable “clean” sources of renewable energy such as solar and wind? Protecting nature and providing water, food and energy to the world can no longer be either-or propositions. We have at our disposal the cross-sector expertise necessary to make informed decisions for the good of life on our planet, so let’s use it wisely. Meeting the sustainable targets we propose requires a second front on land to shift how we use available real estate and where we choose to conduct necessary activities. Overall, the changes we include in our more sustainable view allow the world to meet global food, water and energy demands with no additional conversion of natural habitat for those needs—an outcome that is not possible under business as usual. We need this level of integration in our thinking and problem-solving as our planet faces dire and complex sustainability challenges—related to environmental viability, social equity, and economic prosperity.
Biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, discharge of plastic litter into the oceans, climate change and increasing disaster risk continue at rates that bring potentially disastrous consequences for humanity”. Building a more sustainable global economy will help reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. It is, therefore, critically important that the international community meet the UN's Sustainable Development Goals – and also the targets for reducing emissions set in the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015.