ASTRA Lecture Series: Evan Fraser - Food Security and Climate Change: Disciplinary Problems and Interdisciplinary Solutions
Date and Time
Location
MacKinnon 020
Details
Presented by ASTRA, College of Arts and College of Biological Science
Evan Fraser, Department of Geography, University of Guelph
Current research about how climate change may affect food security is divided into two broad camps. The first, which is drawn mostly from the natural sciences, uses mathematical models of crop productivity to assess climate change impacts in terms of changes in productivity. The second, which is dominated by social scientists, tends to favour qualitative methods as a way of assessing how climate change may affect livelihood strategies and access to resources. This talk will explore the strengths and limits of both approaches and present results from two multi-year research studies where (1) socio-economic insights have been used to improve the precision of crop-climate models and (2) livelihoods based case studies have been modeled using mathematical tools to develop climate change policy scenarios. In the last part of the talk, the strengths and weaknesses of combining qualitative and quantitative methods will be discussed.