GEOG 430
Human Use of the Environment

Week 6 Overview

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The Food-Energy-Water Nexus:

William Easterling, NSF assistant director for Geosciences and Professor of Geography at Penn State has commented: "Food, energy and water have long been studied independently or in pairs, but not all three at once... Now, novel ways of examining all three together are yielding important new knowledge that will help us achieve food, water and energy security even with further population growth."

This week, we will read about the FEW Nexus and the Environmental Impacts of Agriculture.

As you go through the material for this week, consider the following:

  • How might thinking about food-energy-water all at the same time improve decision making around sustainability?
  • What links do you see to past weeks (Planetary Boundaries, Social-Ecological Systems, Governance and Environmental Justice)?
  • Does the idea food-energy-water nexus consider justice and equity adequately?
  • Do you believe we can produce enough food to feed the world and reduce the environmental impacts of food production? Do you see links to Malthusian thought in this weeks material?
 

Week 6 Checklist

Tasks
To Read Read the Week 6 course content.

Use the links below to continue moving through the lesson material.
To Read Leck, H., Conway, D., Bradshaw, M., & Rees, J. (2015). Tracing the water–energy–food nexus: description, theory and practice. Geography Compass, 9(8), 445-460. A link to the reading is located in the Week 6 module in Canvas.
To Read Stein, C., & Jaspersen, L. J. (2018). A relational framework for investigating nexus governance. The Geographical Journal (online first). A link to the reading is located in the Week 6 module in Canvas.
To Read Campbell, B. M., Beare, D. J., Bennett, E. M., Hall-Spencer, J. M., Ingram, J. S. I., Jaramillo, F., . . . Shindell, D. (2017). Agriculture production as a major driver of the Earth system exceeding planetary boundaries. Ecology and Society, 22(4) A link to the reading is located in the Week  6 module in Canvas.
To Submit See Canvas, course announcements.

Note: Please refer to the Calendar in Canvas for specific time frames and due dates.