The Brazilian Food-Energy-Water Nexus: policy integration challenges in a complex system

Speaker: Pablo Salas (University of Cambridge) 

Collaboration between researchers and policy-makers has perhaps never been as crucial as it is today, in view of the many critical issues that countries, particularly Brazil, face in the context of the Water-Energy-Food (FEW) nexus. A perfect storm of complex interactions, dependencies and vulnerabilities is most likely to be expected in Brazil, given its current environmental and economic situation. On the one hand, climate change is highly likely to change weather patterns, which will detrimentally affect agriculture and biodiversity in Brazil. On the other hand, Brazilian economy relies heavily on exports of natural resources for prosperity, and global changes in demand for commodities will put pressure on the Brazilian economy. In this talk, I will present the main aspects of the complex nexus system, with special focus on the challenges associated to create policy to improve the resilience of the Brazilian FEW Nexus.

Dr Pablo Salas is an Economist and Electrical Engineer by training, with a PhD in Land Economy from the University of Cambridge. He is currently a Research Fellow at the Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance (C-EENRG), Department of Land Economy. Dr Salas’ wider research examines how interactions among energy, environmental and economic systems can be used to improve global strategies for climate change risk reduction and sustainable economic development. As part of his fellowship, he is also leading the development of various outreach activities at C-EENRG, actively connecting academics with policy makers and innovators.

This talk is part of the Darwin College Humanities and Social Sciences Group series.