Stanford University

Climate

Impacts of ENSO Events on Chinese Rice Production and the World Rice Market

Climate shocks leading to floods and droughts present high levels of uncertainty and difficulties in decision making for water district managers, agricultural producers, and policymakers throughout the world. This project focuses on the impacts of El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events on precipitation and temperature variability, and in turn on water management and crop production, in one of China's major rice bowls, Jiangxi Province. Jiangxi is also one of China's poorest provinces, where swings in crop production and prices can jeopardize rural incomes and food security.

Austria's Immediate Past Presidency of the European Council

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Ambassador Eva Nowotny is the official representative of the Republic of Austria in the United States and is responsible for all aspects of the relationship between the two countries. On December 04, 2003 she presented her credentials to President George W. Bush at the White House. She is also Permanent Representative of the Observer Mission of Austria to the Organization of American States (OAS) and Ambassador to the Commonwealth of the Bahamas.

Cosponsored by the Consulate General of Austria, Los Angeles http://www.austria.org

 

Audio Synopsis:

In this presentation, Ambassador Nowotny offers her thoughts on Austria's recent six month presidency of the European Union, which she points out has fostered an increase in positive attitudes toward the EU on behalf of Austrian citizens. While 2005 was a difficult year for the EU in light of the French and Dutch rejections of the latest treaty and disagreement about enlargement policy especially with respect to Turkey, the Austrian presidency has "reestablished a cooperative climate" and a degree of optimism to the European Union. Several unexpected events early in Austria's presidency presented challenges, including Russia's decision to stop the flow of Gazprom gas to Ukraine, the Maoist uprising in Nepal, and Iran's declaration that it would continue developing nuclear weapons. Austria used these challenges as an opportunity to reinvigorate discussion of foreign policy and negotiate a coherent EU response to international conflicts. 

The ambassador then highlights key issues dominating Austria's presidency. These include the debate over the future of Europe, centering on the constitutional treaty and enlargement; the internal development of the European project, especially fostering economic competitiveness and addressing crime and terrorism; and the role of Europe in the world, where Austria has contributed strongly by helping to resolve conflicts like those in the Balkans, and helping to develop Europe's "neighborhood policy." 

Finally, Ambassador Nowotny emphasizes the importance of the transatlantic relationship, which she feels the US and Europe attach equal weight to. Key areas of cooperation in years to come will include resolving international conflicts and dealing with crises, fostering the transatlantic economic partnership, improving international governance structures, and combatting terrorism.

A discussion session following the presentation raised such questions as: Where are there differences between the interests of Austria and of the European Union? In a post-9/11 world, do we have the institutional structure necessary to deal with new issues such as terrorism, and can we rely on those left over from WWII (NATO, OSCE, etc.)? Does Austria approach Southern and Eastern European countries as one group or does it prefer to deal with them individually?

CISAC Conference Room

Eva Nowotny Austrian Ambassador to the United States Speaker
Lectures

Leadership in China's High Tech Companies

From an unprecedented number of start-ups to a rising class of billion-dollar giants going global, high technology companies in China have a dramatically increasing need for effective leadership. Since 1999, founders have led 24 Chinese firms to IPOs on NASDAQ, ranging from portals such as Sina and AsiaInfo in 2000 to mobile hardware makers and service providers like Hurray!, Vimicro, and Techfaith in 2005.

Jeremy Carl

616 Serra St.
Encina Hall E415
Stanford, CA 94305

(650) 723-2136 (650) 724-1717
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Jeremy_Carl_June_2011.jpg

Jeremy Carl is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution whose work focuses on energy and environmental policy, with particular emphasis on energy security, climate policy, and global fossil fuel markets. In addition, he writes extensively on US-India relations and Indian politics.

Before coming to Stanford, he was a  research fellow in resource and development economics at the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), India’s leading energy and environmental policy organization.

He is the editor of Conversations about Energy: How the Experts See America’s Energy Choices, and his work has appeared in numerous publications including the Journal of Energy Security, Energy Security Challenges for the 21st Century, Natural Resources and Sustainable Development, and Papers on International Environmental Negotiation.

In addition to his work on energy, the environment, and India, Jeremy has written about a variety of other issues related to U.S. politics and public policy; Jeremy’s work has been featured in and cited by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Newsweek, South China Morning Post, Indian Express, and many other leading newspapers and magazines. He has advised and assisted numerous groups including the World Bank, the United Nations, and the staff of the U.S. Congress.

Jeremy received a BA with distinction from Yale University. He holds an MPA from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and did doctoral work at Stanford University, where he was a Packard Foundation Stanford Graduate Fellow.

Research Fellow

David Lobell

Energy and Environment Building
473 Via Ortega
Stanford CA 94305

(650) 721-6207
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Professor, Earth System Science
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment
Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR)
Affiliate, Precourt Institute of Energy
shg_ff1a1284.jpg PhD

David Lobell is the Benjamin M. Page Professor at Stanford University in the Department of Earth System Science and the Gloria and Richard Kushel Director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment. He is also the William Wrigley Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy and Research (SIEPR).

Lobell's research focuses on agriculture and food security, specifically on generating and using unique datasets to study rural areas throughout the world. His early research focused on climate change risks and adaptations in cropping systems, and he served on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report as lead author for the food chapter and core writing team member for the Summary for Policymakers. More recent work has developed new techniques to measure progress on sustainable development goals and study the impacts of climate-smart practices in agriculture. His work has been recognized with various awards, including the Macelwane Medal from the American Geophysical Union (2010), a Macarthur Fellowship (2013), the National Academy of Sciences Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences (2022) and election to the National Academy of Sciences (2023).

Prior to his Stanford appointment, Lobell was a Lawrence Post-doctoral Fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He holds a PhD in Geological and Environmental Sciences from Stanford University and a Sc.B. in Applied Mathematics from Brown University.

Lobell Lab

A project to advance the science that guides investment in food security and crop productivity, and to effectively communicate this science to a broad audience.
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G-FEED: Global Food, Environment and Economic Dynamics

An interdisciplinary group working cooperatively to understand the relationship between society and the environment by examining regional and global scale phenomena using statistical analyses of real world data.
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Gregory P. Asner

Carnegie Institution
260 Panama Street
Stanford, California, 94305-4150

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Professor of Environmental Earth System Science
asner.jpg MA, PhD

Greg Asner is a faculty member in the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology and in the Department of Environmental Earth System Science at Stanford University. His scientific training spans the fields of ecology, biogeochemistry, remote sensing and engineering. Asner and his colleagues combine field studies, airborne and satellite remote sensing, and computer simulation modeling to study land use and climate change at the regional level. He focuses much of his research in the humid tropical forests and deserts of the world.

David S. Battisti

Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences
University of Washington
Box 351640
Seattle WA 98195-1640

(206) 543-2019 (206) 543-0306
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Tamaki Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington
battisti_sm.jpg MS, PhD

David Battisti received a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences (1988) from the University of Washington. He was an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin until 1990. Since then, he has been on the Faculty in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington, and was the Director of JISAO from 1997-2003. Presently, he is the Tamaki Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington and Director of the University's Earth Initiative.

David Battisti's research is focused on understanding the natural variability of the climate system. He is especially interested in understanding how the interactions between the ocean, atmosphere, land and sea ice lead to variability in climate on time scales from seasonal to decades. His previous research includes coastal oceanography, the physics of the El Nino/Southern Osciallation (ENSO) phenomenon, midlatitude atmosphere/ocean variability and variability in the coupled atmosphere/sea ice system in the Arctic. Battisti is presently working to improve the El Nino models and their forecast skill, and to understand the mechanisms responsible for the drought cycles in the Sahel, and the decade-to-decade changes in the climate of the Pacific Northwest, including how the latter affects the snow pack in the Cascades and coastal ranges from Washington to Alaska. He is also working on the impacts of climate variability and climate change on food production in Mexico and Indonesia.

Battisti's recent interests are in paleoclimate: in particular, the mechanisms responsible for the remarkable "abrupt" global climate changes evident throughout the last glacial period.

Battisti has served on numerous international science panels, on Committees of the National Research Council. He served for five years as co-chair of the Science Steering Committee for the U.S. Program on Climate (US CLIVAR) and is co-author of several international science plans. He has published over 60 papers in peer-review journals in atmospheric sciences and oceanography, and twice been awarded distinguished teaching awards.

Kenneth Cassman

387 Plant Science Hall
Department of Agronomy and Horticulture
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
P. O. Box 830915
Lincoln, NE 68583-0915

(402) 472-5554 (402) 472-8650
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Professor of Agronomy and Horticulture, University of Nebraska
cassman_web_copy.jpg PhD

The need to meet food demand while protecting environmental quality and natural resources for future generations is a scientific challenge that has been grossly underestimated, and this theme provides a unifying framework for my research. Agricultural systems must ultimately contribute to solving the most pressing environmental problems facing humankind because agriculture is practiced on 33% of the earth's surface. Hence, the ultimate goal of my research and educational programs is to ensure that increases in food production do not compromise the quality of soil and water resources or threaten the ecological integrity of natural ecosystems. Current projects focus on understanding process controls on carbon sequestration in agricultural soils, energy efficiency of major rainfed and irrigated cropping systems in the north-central USA, the potential for ecological intensification of maize-based cropping systems, and use of crop simulation models to improve crop and soil management decisions. As a member of interdisciplinary research teams, our goal is to seek fundamental knowledge about the dynamic, interactive effects of climate and crop/soil management practices on short- and long-term performance of agroecosystems-with a focus on carbon sequestration, greenhouse gas emissions, nitrogen and energy efficiency, and crop productivity.

New Program on Food Security and the Environment Tackles Global Hunger and Environmental Destruction

Authors
Rosamond L. Naylor
News Type
News
Date
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This past autumn the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) in conjunction with the Woods Institute for the Environment launched a program on Food Security and the Environment (FSE) to address the deficit in academia and, on a larger scale, the global dialogue surrounding the critical issues of food security, poverty, and environmental degradation.

"Hunger is the silent killer and moral outrage of our time; however, there are few university programs in the United States designed to study and solve the problem of global food insecurity," states program director Rosamond L. Naylor. "FSE's dual affiliation with FSI and the new Stanford Institute for the Environment position it well to make significant steps in this area."

Through a focused research portfolio and an interdisciplinary team of scholars led by Naylor and CESP (Center for Environmental Science and Policy) co-director Walter P. Falcon, FSE aims to design new approaches to solve these persistent and under-prioritized problems, expand higher education on food security and the environment at Stanford, and provide direct policy outreach.

Productive food systems and their environmental consequences are at the core of the program. While many of these systems are global in character, but they are influenced significantly by differing food objectives, income level, and instruments among nations. The program thus seeks to understand the food security issues that are of paramount interest to poor countries, the food diversification challenges that are a focus of middle-income nations, and the food safety and subsidy concerns prominent in richer nations.

Chronic hunger in a time of prosperity

Although the world's supply of basic foods has doubled over the past century, roughly 850 million people (12 percent of the world's population) suffer from chronic hunger. Food insecurity deaths during the past 20 years outnumber war deaths by a factor of at least 5 to 1. Food insecurity is particularly widespread in agricultural regions where resource scarcity and environmental degradation constrain productivity and income growth.

FSE is currently assessing the impacts of climate variability on food security in Asian rice economies. This ongoing project combines the expertise of atmospheric scientists, agricultural economists, and policy analysts to understand and mitigate the adverse effects of El Niño-related climate variability on rice production and food security under current and future global warming conditions. As a consequence of Falcon and Naylor's long-standing roles as policy advisors in Indonesia, models developed through this project have already been embedded into analytical units within Indonesia's Ministry of Agriculture, the Planning Ministry, and the Ministry of Finance.

"With such forecasts in hand, the relevant government agencies are much better equipped to mitigate the negative consequences of El Niño events on incomes and food security in the Indonesian countryside," explain Falcon and Naylor.

Food diversification and intensification

With rapid income growth, urbanization, and population growth in developing economies, priorities shift from food security to the diversification of agricultural production and consumption. "Meat production is projected to double by 2020" states Harold A. Mooney, CESP senior fellow and an author of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. "In China alone, meat consumption has more than doubled in the past generation." As a result, land once used to provide grains for humans now provides feed for hogs and poultry.

These trends will have major consequences on the global environment-affecting the quality of the atmosphere, water, and soil due to nutrient overloads; impacting marine fisheries both locally and globally through fish meal use; and threatening human health, as, for example, through excessive use of antibiotics.

An FSE project is looking at these trends as it relates to intensive livestock production and assessing the environmental impacts to gain a better understanding of the true costs of this resource-intensive system. A product of this work recently appeared as a Policy Forum piece in the December 9, 2005, issue of Science titled "Losing the Links Between Livestock and Land".

Numerous factors have contributed to the global growth of livestock systems, lead author Naylor notes, including declining feed-grain prices, relatively inexpensive transportation costs, and trade liberalization. "But many of the true costs remain largely unaccounted for," she says. Those costs include destruction of forests and grasslands to provide farmland for corn, soybeans, and other feed crops destined not directly for humans but for livestock; utilization of large quantities of freshwater; and nitrogen losses from croplands and animal manure.

Naylor and her research team are seeking better ways to track all costs of livestock production, especially the hidden ones related to ecosystem degradation and destruction. "What is needed is a re-coupling of crop and livestock systems," Naylor says. "If not physically, then through pricing and other policy mechanisms that reflect social costs of resource use and ecological abuse."

Such policies "should not significantly compromise the improving diets of developing countries, nor should they prohibit trade," Naylor adds. Instead, they should "focus on regulatory and incentive-based tools to encourage livestock and feed producers to internalize pollution costs, minimize nutrient run-off, and pay the true price of water."

Looking ahead

The future of the program on Food Security and the Environment looks bright, busy, and expansive. While a varied portfolio of projects is in line for the upcoming year, a strong emphasis remains in the area of food security. Building on existing research at Stanford, researchers are identifying avenues for enhancing orphan crop production in the world's least developed countries-crops with little international trade and investment, but with high local value in terms of food and nutrition security. The work seeks to identify advanced genetic and genomic strategies, along with natural resource management strategies, to improve orphan crop yields and stability, enhance crop diversity, and increase rural incomes through orphan crop production.

Another priority area of research centers on the development of biofuels. Biofuels are becoming increasingly a part of the policy set for world food and agriculture. As countries such as the United States seek energy self-reliance and look for alternatives to food and feed subsidies under WTO (World Trade Organization) rules, the conversion of corn, sugar, and soybeans to ethanol and other energy sources becomes more attractive. New extraction methods are making the technology more efficient, and crude oil prices at $60 per barrel are fundamentally changing the economics of biomass energy conversion. A large switch by key export food and feed suppliers, such as the United States and Brazil, to biofuels could fundamentally alter export prices, and hence the world food and feed situation. A team of FSE researchers will assess the true costs of these conversions.

The FSE program recently received a grant through the Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies to initiate new interdisciplinary research activities. One such project links ongoing research at Stanford on the environmental and resource costs of industrial livestock production and trade to assess the extent and rate of Brazil's rainforest destruction for soybean production. "Tens of millions of hectares of native grassland and rainforest are currently being cleared for soybean production to supply the global industrial livestock sector," says Naylor. A significant share of Brazil's soybeans is being shipped to China, where rapid income growth is fueling tremendous increases in meat consumption."

A team of remote-sensing experts, ecologists, agronomists, and economists will be looking at the ecological effects on the landscape through biogeochemical changes and biodiversity loss, the impacts of land clearing on the regional hydrologic cycle and climate change, the economic patterns of trade, and the role of policies to achieve an appropriate balance between agricultural commodity trade, production practices, and conservation in Brazil's rainforest states.

"I'm extremely pleased to see the rapid growth of FSE and am encouraged by the recent support provided through the Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies," states Naylor. "It enables the program to engage faculty members from economics, political science, biology, civil and environmental engineering, earth sciences, and medicine-as well as graduate students throughout the university-in a set of collaborative research activities that could significantly improve human well-being and the quality of the environment."

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