A US-Africa workshop for a science and research vision on the food-water-energy (FEW) nexus

Duke University, Durham NC

Investigators

Abstract

This award will fund a two-day satellite workshop prior to the Next Einstein Forum (NEF) in Dakar, Senegal. The workshop will be held on March 6-7, 2016, and will focus on enabling US-African collaboration on research challenges related to the food, energy, water (FEW) nexus. Providing adequate food, energy, and water for human development places enormous pressure on the environment. The planetary scale of the challenge requires understanding complex and inadequately characterized inter-relationships between ecosystems, climate, and social dynamics. This workshop will bring together an interdisciplinary team of U.S. and African researchers to sharpen the critical research questions surrounding the FEW nexus, to outline strategies and solutions, and to offer a vision for future FEW research goals, particularly in Africa. The focus on Africa is appropriate since understanding of the FEW nexus cannot possibly be complete without considering the African continent which includes 20% of the global land mass, perhaps 60% of the global arable land, is experiencing rapid deforestation and significant ecosystem degradation challenges, and has a rapidly growing and young 16% of the global population increasingly shifting from rural to urban demographics. Africa is and will increasingly be an important region for FEW nexus research and U.S. scientists need better access to the best scientists as well as key sites and facilities. It will therefore be valuable to hold this meeting in Africa to enable a larger number of African scientists to participate. In addition, the preliminary outputs of this meeting will be presented at the Next Einstein Forum, providing an opportunity for a large and influential group of policy makers and stakeholders interested in science and development in Africa to consider the FEW nexus more substantively. This workshop will pursue a relatively quantitative approach to understanding the FEW nexus in Africa, considering the FEW system of systems as a large-scale space-time optimization challenge to manage the limited resources of ecosystems with the objective of securing food, energy and water via sustainable management of environmental processes. U.S. and African researchers with expertise in environmental science, ecology, hydrology, biology, agriculture, economics, cultural anthropology and geography will participate. The dialogue and resulting collaborations should improve future opportunities for US researcher to understand unique and generalizable elements of African FEW systems, appreciate existing research and resources, and prepare for future research involving collaboration with Africa. This activity is co-funded by the Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE) and the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems (CBET).