WEF Nexus

E-Learning Course: RE-Thinking Access to Energy Business Models: Ways to Walk the Water-Energy-Food Nexus Talk
2020-03-26 02:00 - 15:30 UTC
RE-Thinking Access to Energy Business Models: Ways to Walk the Water-Energy-Food Nexus Talk
Background
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Africa Office Energy Unit and the Ecosystem Division (Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-Based Activities) in collaboration with the Renewable Energy Solutions for Africa (RES4Africa) are joining forces to organize a series of online webinar trainings on the WEF Nexus. The first training will take place on Thursday, 26 March 2020, from 2:00-3:30 PM (EAT). It will mainly focus on the contribution of renewable energy towards the implementation of the Water, Food, and Energy (WEF) Nexus.
You are invited to participate in this first online webinar training whose emphasis will be given to re-thinking the access to energy business models through WEF Nexus approaches and cross-sectorial partnerships, paving the way for Africa’s long-term sustainable economic growth.
Further, a brief presentation on “Water-Energy-Nexus” with a focus on the contribution of wastewater to this nexus will be delivered. This could serve as a path for providing an introduction to the second webinar that will be focusing mainly on the contribution of water towards the implementation of WEF Nexus.
Speakers

Roberto Vigotti (Secretary-General of RES4Africa Foundation)
Marco Aresti (Access2Energy Programme Manager at RES4Africa Foundation)
Luca Traini (Senior Business Development and Partnership Officer at RES4Africa Foundation)
Birguy Lamizana (Programme Management Officer for wastewater management at UNEP)

Who Can Participate?
Anyone who is interested!
Registration and Access
Concept Note

7th Climate Change Online Conference (CLIMATE2020)
2020-03-23 - 2020-03-30
Overview
The Research and Transfer Centre ‘Sustainability and Climate Change Management’ (FTZ-NK) of the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Germany, will convene the seventh Climate Change Online Conference (CLIMATE2020). Taking place exclusively on the internet, CLIMATE2020 is guided by and will contribute to SDG 13 (climate action). Specific themes to be addressed include:

Resilience and Capacity Building;
Intelligent Climate Policy and Governance;
Education, Awareness and Adaptation;
Climate Finance and Access to Funding;
Intelligent Climate Planning, Small Islands and Developing Countries; and
Climate Change as a Threat to Biodiversity.

Event Information

You will have with free unlimited access to all kinds of high-quality scientific articles, climate projects and further learning opportunities 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Get involved in international dialogues and the exchange of ideas with experts from the academic, political, economic and social sectors and the rest of the community.

CLIMATE2020 is guided by and will contribute to the Sustainable Development goal 13 (Climate Action).

The objective of the on-line conference is to convey the most recent research results on climate change and its impacts, as well as to provide especially early career researchers from all over the world with the opportunity to present their findings at a global level. This event fills a knowledge gap in respect of thematic discussions on climate change mitigation and adaptation, which will be performed both in an integrative and interactive way. The conference also offers you insights on numerous climate projects, initiatives and strategies, which are currently being implemented on the five continents and considered to be latest examples of worldwide climate change adaptation and mitigation activities.
REGISTER HERE
More information on website

AGEP Winter School: An interdisciplinary perspective on the Water-Energy-Food Nexus
2020-03-16 - 2020-03-18 | Gustav-Stresemann-Institut, Langer Grabenweg 68, Bonn, 53175, Germany
UPDATE: Event Cancelled
“Following the recommendations concerning health precautions, the Nexus Winter School is canceled for now. We very much regret the situation and hope to be able to offer the event again in the course of the year.”
Interdisciplinary Workshop for students, DAAD Scholarship Holders and young researchers.
Overall topic of the workshop is the scientific coverage of the so-called water, energy and food nexus by an interdisciplinary approach. With this interdisciplinary approach the interlinkages, similarities but also differences of the mentioned three sectors, new insights and different perspectives will be achieved and a deeper understanding will be created. Another focus lies on the network benefits of this workshop, which arise when students, scholars and interested people will collaborate in such a cross-cutting scientific topic and will take into consideration the different perspectives of the “global north” and the “global south”.
Experts of different research areas from the GIZ, DIE-GDI, UNU, TH-Köln, Uni Darmstadt, Uni Bonn, and GSI will present latest research findings on the focus areas water, energy, soil and food. Additionally the participants will work in various working groups on the lecture inputs using the Open Space method.
The detailed program for the workshop will be available by mid-February.
Participation and registration:
Attendance fee is 40,- € (60,- € for participants who want to be accommodated for 2 nights at the conference center).

Food Loss and Waste – Can we end it by 2030?
2020-03-12 09:30 - 11:00 (America/New_York)
Co-Organized by IFPRI, Champions 12.3, Embassy of Denmark in Washington, DC, World Resources Institute (WRI)
MAR 12, 2020 – 09:30 AM TO 11:00 AM EDT
With just ten years to go before the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (SDG 2030) is to be met, eliminating food loss and waste is increasingly urgent.
Building on the 2019 inaugural event, this special event will discuss whether, as a global community, we can or will end food loss and waste and presenters will share on their efforts to reach SDG 2030 targets.
Breakfast will be available starting at 9:00am. Event begins promptly at 9:30am.
How to Register:

Eventbrite – Register for this FREE event here
Facebook – coming soon (join IFPRI Live Group and watch livestream)
Website – Find speaker list, event details, and register directly here

E-Learning Course: Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems: The Nexus between Water, Energy and Food
2020-02-10 - 2020-07-27
Overview
In this course you will become familiar with the ideas of the water-energy-food nexus and transdisciplinary thinking. You will learn to see your community or country as a complex social-ecological system and to describe its water, energy and food metabolism in the form of a pattern, as well as to map the categories of social actors. We will provide you with the tools to measure the nexus elements and to analyze them in a coherent way across scales and dimensions of analysis. In this way, your quantitative analysis will become useful for informed decision-making. You will be able to detect and quantify dependence on non-renewable resources and externalization of environmental problems to other societies and ecosystems (a popular ‘solution’ in the western world). Practical case studies, from both developed and developing countries, will help you evaluate the state-of-play of a given community or country and to evaluate possible solutions. Last but not least, you will learn to see pressing social-ecological issues, such as energy poverty, water scarcity and inequity, from a radically different perspective, and to question everything you’ve been told so far.

Level: Intermediate
Commitment: 4-6 hours/week
Language of Instruction: English
Pass all graded assignments to complete the course

View Syllabus Here
Enrollment and Dates
Enroll can be completed on the Coursera website. This course is offered a 8 weekly intervals with the upcoming enrollment and start dates:

10 February 2020 (enrollment closing 15 February)
6 April 2020 (enrollment closing 11 April)
1 June 2020 (enrollment closing 6 June)
27 July 2020 (enrollment closing 1 August 2020)

Intended Participants
The course is directed toward upper-division undergraduate and graduate students from a wide variety of disciplines (environmental sciences, engineering, agricultural sciences, social sciences) as well as professionals (NGOs, think tanks) and policy makers concerned with sustainable development in both developed and developing countries.
Instructors
Mario Giampietro, ICREA Research Professor
Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA)
Andrea Saltelli, Guest researcher
Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA)
Tarik Serrano, Post-Doc Researcher
Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA)
Course Creator
The Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) is a public university located in the metropolitan area of Barcelona. International in its outlook, it is fully consolidated within its local surroundings, and offers quality education in close association with research activity, the transfer of scientific, technological, cultural and educational knowledge, the promotion of its human potential and the responsible management of available resources. The UAB currently offers 81 degrees, 130 official Master Programmes and 183 UAB-specific Masters Degrees. In addition, it offers 174 lifelong learning programmes and 65 PhD Programmes, 27 of which have been distinguished through Quality Awards. The UAB has a total of over 3,500 teaching and research staff, over 2,000 administrative staff and over 40,000 students.

Conference: Prevention and management of conflicts linked to the governance of natural resources in West Africa: opportunities and challenges
2019-11-12 - 2019-11-14 | Niamey, Niger
About
The Civil Peace Service and the Frexus project, both implemented by the GIZ, are organizing an international conference on the theme: “Prevention and management of conflicts related to natural resource governance in West Africa: challenges and opportunities.” The conference takes place between November 12th and 14th 2019 in Niamey, Niger. The conference aims to inform and create synergies between different actors from West Africa and elsewhere, sharing their capacities in the prevention, reduction and transformation of conflicts related to the management of natural resources.
View Conference Document Here

Webinar: Changing Farm Structure and Rural Transformation in Africa
2019-10-24 12:00 - 13:00 UTC | Webinar
About
Presenter: Thomas Jayne, University Foundation Professor of Agriculture, Food, and Resource Economics at Michigan State University
The rise of medium-scale farms in Africa is affecting the region in diverse ways that are difficult to generalize. Many such farms are a source of technical change and commercialization of African agriculture; they attract agribusiness investment and improve market access conditions for all nearby smallholders. However, medium-scale land acquisitions may exacerbate land scarcity in favorable rural areas, raise land prices, and crowd out young peoples’ access to land for farming. While much more research is necessary to effectively guide African governments, our findings indicate that medium-scale commercialized farms can be a dynamic driver of agricultural transformation but this does not reduce the importance of agricultural ministries maintaining a clear commitment to supporting smallholder farms. Strengthening land tenure security of indigenous rural people to maintain land rights and support productivity investments by smallholder farm household remains crucial.
Register Here

SNIP: Chris Scott Seminar
2019-10-08
Strategic Networks and Initiatives Program (SNIP) Fall Speakers Series
On October 8th, Penn State hosted Christopher Scott for seminar titled: “Sustaining Groundwater Irrigation in Breadbasket Regions: A Water-Energy-Food Nexus Diagnostic Assessment”
Prof. Scott serves as Director of the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, Professor of Geography and Development, and Director of the Consortium for Arizona-Mexico Arid Environments – all at the University of Arizona. He is founding co-director of the AQUASEC Center of Excellence for Water Security. He was a 2018-19 Leshner Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science, focusing on water-energy-food security. He earned PhD and MS degrees at Cornell University and BS and BA degrees at Swarthmore College. His research and engagement are concentrated in the Southwest US, Mexico, and India, as well as Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and Nepal. He speaks Spanish and Hindi, as well as conversational Portuguese and Nepali.
Watch Recorded Presentation Here

African Climate Risks Conference
2019-10-07 - 2019-10-09 | Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
The African Climate Risks Conference (ACRC) is an open platform for sharing the latest African climate research among researchers, policy makers, practitioners and development partners. The ACRC will offer a prime opportunity to promote the uptake of new data, tools and knowledge; brokering new research collaborations and more targeted donor support. It will also stimulate increased contribution of African experts to, and improve coverage of Africa, in the IPCC assessment reports; and bring together development partners to deliberate on how to improve programming to support African-led climate research and service priorities. The overarching theme of the ACRC is:
Dismantling barriers to urgent climate change adaptation actions.

8th World Conference on Ecological Restoration
2019-09-24 - 2019-09-28 | Cape Town, South Africa
We proudly invite you to Cape Town for the 8th World Conference on Ecological Restoration from 24-28 September 2019, jointly hosted by the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) and the South African Water Research Commission. We are excited to bring together colleagues from across Africa and around the world in this spectacular setting to discuss and debate the many issues and challenges inherent in planning, designing, implementing, and monitoring successful restoration programs in all biomes and on all continents.

SNIP Speaker Series
2019-09-20 11:00 - 2019-10-23 12:30 UTC | Pennsylvania State University
Strategic Networks and Initiatives Program (SNIP) Fall 2019 Speaker Series at Penn State
“Building a Food-Water-Energy Nexus Community of Transformative and Convergent Research”
Upcoming Events:

Friday, September 20, 11:00 AM

Seminar with Claudia Ringler, Deputy Director of Environment and Production Technology Division at IFPRI, entitled:
“The Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Insights from Global, Basin and Local Case Studies of Growing
Natural Resource Scarcity in the Eastern Nile Basin”

Friday, September 20, 4:00 PM

Geography Coffee Hour with Claudia Ringerl, IFPRI, entitled:
“Achieving nutrition outcomes through improved agricultural water management: What are the options?”

Tuesday, October 8, 12:00 PM

Seminar with Chris Scott, Professor and University Distinguished Scholar at University of Arizona, entitle:
“Sustaining Groundwater Irrigation in Breadbasket Regions: A Water-Energy-Food Nexus Diagnostic Assessment”

Wednesday, October 23, 12:30 PM

Seminar with Steve Davis, Associate Professor, Earth System Science at University of California Irvine, entitled:
“Integrated and Transdisciplinary Analyses of Food-Energy-Water Systems”
Dates and times of the following to be determined:
Webinar by Arjen Hoekstra, Professor in Water Management at University of Twente, Netherlands
Mathew Kurian, Research Assistant Professor at Penn State and former Academic Officer at UNU-Flores, Germany

SNIP: Claudia Ringler
2019-09-20
Strategic Networks and Initiatives Program (SNIP) Fall Speaker Series
On September 20th, a seminar and coffee hour with Claudia Ringer was held at Penn State University. Claudia Ringler was appointed deputy division director of the Environment and Production Technology Division at IFPRI in 2011. Claudia manages IFPRI’s Water Research group and since 2015 is also the Natural Resource Management Theme lead.
Seminar title: “The Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Insights from Global Basin, and Local Case Studies of Growing Natural Resource Scarcity in the Eastern Nile Basin.”
The geography coffee hour title: “Achieving Nutrition Outcomes through Improved Water Management: What are the Options?”
Watch video recording of seminar here

SNIP: Ben Ruddell
2019-09-13
Strategic Networks and Initiatives Program (SNIP) Speaker Series
Ben Ruddell, Ph.D., P.E., Director Associate Professor of the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems at Northern Arizona University and Director of FEWSION project, held the webinar, “FEWSION, a National U.S. Mesoscale Supply Chain Network” on September 13th.
FEWSION is an empirical description of the U.S. food, energy, and water system. The FEWSION project is a Big Data Fusion project to create and explore the first mesoscale map of the U.S. food, energy, and water (+everything) system. It is the first complete footprint database for every US city (water, greenhouse gases, etc.) along with vulnerability and resilience benchmarks.
Click here to view recorded webinar
Click here to explore the FEWSION website
Click here to view the FEW-View educational map tool

UNFCCC Technical Expert Meetings on Mitigation (TEM-M)
2019-06-20 13:00 - 2019-06-21 19:00 (Europe/Helsinki)
The UNFCCC Technical Expert Meetings on Mitigation will be held at The Bonn Climate Change Conference (SB 50) in Bonn, Germany on June 20th and 21st from 11:00 to 19:00 (CEST). UNFCCC will be running a live webcast available to those not in physical attendance.
The meetings aim to promote sustainability of the water-energy-food nexus to address the issues related to increasing demand for food from a growing global population which, in addition to climate change, is placing significant pressure on agricultural production and natural resources.
During the sessions, governments and non-party stakeholders will explore high-potential mitigation policies, practices, and technologies with significant sustainable development co-benefits, with the potential in increase pre-2020 climate ambition. It will be led and organized by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), and the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), supported by the UNFCCC secretariat.
The event will consist of the following six sessions:
Session 1: Decarbonizing the primary production phase of the agri- food chain
Session 2: Decarbonizing the post harvesting phase of the agri-food chain
Session 3: Circular economy solutions/innovations in water and energy management for the agri-food chain
Session 4: Nature based solutions to integrate energy and water aspects into the agri-food chain
Session 5: Making Water-Energy- Food integrated policies work for food security and the climate
Session 6: Replicating and upscaling innovative solutions for securing clean energy and water access for the agri-food chain
Session five in particular will focus on the Water-Energy-Food Nexus and feature Margaret Koli as a speaker. In light of the outcomes of the workshop in Nigeria and the initiation of the WEFS nexus online platform, the session calls upon experts to address the questions below related to learning from what works and where we are regarding policy and governance solutions aimed at promoting renewable energy and smart water use in the agri-food chain and socio-economic benefits of such solutions by discussing case studies, examples and their work experience:

What policy and governance solutions are available/used to help accelerate the scaling up of renewable energy and smart water use in the agri-food chain?
How these solutions benefit the agri-food chain, particularly in rural areas?
What can Parties and non-Party stakeholders learn from these policy options and governance frameworks, including the enablers and challenges/barriers, to result in emission reductions and sustainable development co-benefits?

Penn State University African Studies Program 7th Annual Conference
2019-04-17 - 2019-04-18 | Pennsylvania State University
“Africa on the Rise! 60 years after 1960”
The African Studies Program at The Pennsylvania State University, 7th annual conference, on April 17th-18th, 2020, titled “Africa on the Rise! 60 years after 1960,” commemorates the “Year of Africa.” 1960 significantly cascades the independence of African nations, as no less than 17 countries gained their freedom from colonial rule in that year alone. Significantly, with the struggles for independence and decolonization, new nation states became mired in internal ethnic clashes, racial discrimination, dictatorships and kleptocracy, foreign interventions, exploitation of natural resources, and urban and rural environmental issues, to name some of the challenges. On the other hand, and more so in the last 20 years, there has been significant growth of African economies. We see leapfrogging of technologies (i.e. cell phones, internet, e-commerce); resurgences and entirely new creative cultural forms particularly in the arts (literature, music, visual, performance, and digital media); women at the forefront in public leadership roles; and, an activation of a politically minded Pan-African youth population ready to change the future. This conference aims to trace the development of Africa since 1960 through formulations such as Global Africa and Theories of the Global South. It aims to bring together humanities and social science scholarship to critically review issues with regards to the decolonization of Africa, Pan-Africanism, the self-reliance of national economies, nation-building experiments, postcolonial challenges, creative arts and new technologies, and the future development of the continent.

For further inquiries, please email psuafr@gmail.com.
REGISTRATION FOR THE CONFERENCE IS FREE AND OPEN TO ALL
