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Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems: the Nexus between Water, Energy and Food
  • Level Professional
  • المدة 23 ساعات hours
  • الطبع بواسطة Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
  • Offered by

عن

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. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Part of the results and case studies presented have been developed within two projects: MAGIC and PARTICIPIA. However, the course does not reflect the views of the funding institutions or of the project partners as a whole, and the case studies were presented purely with an educational and illustrative purpose.

الوحدات

Welcome!

    • 1 Videos
    • 1 Readings
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1 Videos

  • Welcome to our course on Sustainability

1 Readings

  • Welcome learners!

Basic information

    • 4 Readings
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4 Readings

  • Course organization
  • Grading and logistics
  • Acknowledgement
  • Solving doubts and technical issues

Frequently Asked Questions

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4 Readings

  • FAQ - General topics
  • FAQ- Time management
  • FAQ - Quizzes and assignment
  • FAQ - Certificate

What is “the nexus” and why is it getting all this attention?

    • 3 Videos
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3 Videos

  • Introducing the nexus
  • The challenges faced in nexus analysis
  • Examples of “different” analyses of the nexus

The sustainability of the metabolic pattern of Social-Ecological systems

    • 3 Videos
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3 Videos

  • Basic concepts of metabolic analysis
  • The bio-phsyical roots of metabolic patterns
  • Too rich to be green

Three elephants in the room of the sustainability discourse

    • 3 Videos
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3 Videos

  • The “intolerable” dependence on fossil fuel imports
  • Circular economy, Bioeconomy and Zero-emissions
  • Jevon’s paradox and the myth of resource efficiency as a solution for sustainability

Check what you have learnt

    • 1 Assignment
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1 Assignment

  • Quiz 1

Terrible simplifiers

    • 3 Videos
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3 Videos

  • Examples of bad indicators
  • The fragility of numbers
  • Handling the issue of scale

Dealing with complexity

    • 3 Videos
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3 Videos

  • Narratives vs. Storytelling
  • The identity in Complex Systems
  • The Concept of Holon

Alternative framings of quantitative analysis of sustainability

    • 3 Videos
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3 Videos

  • Grammars: how to keep quantitative analysis semantically open
  • Mosaic Effect: integrating quantitative analysis across different hierarchical levels
  • The Sudoku Effect – how to handle impredicativity in quantitative analysis

Check what you have learnt

    • 1 Assignment
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1 Assignment

  • Quiz 2

Food grammars for quantitative accounting

    • 3 Videos
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3 Videos

  • Food accounting
  • An example of an integrated quantitative analysis of food metabolism: Ecuador
  • What are qualities of the produced food that cannot be considered in qualitative analysis?

The analysis of the metabolic pattern of food

    • 3 Videos
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3 Videos

  • Pre-industrial metabolic pattern
  • Technological lock-in of agriculture
  • The post harvest sector

The unsustainability of the existing pattern of development of agriculture

    • 3 Videos
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3 Videos

  • Feeding the cities
  • The mission impossible of agriculture in modern times
  • Multifunctional agriculture

Check what you have learnt

    • 1 Assignment
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1 Assignment

  • Quiz 3

Problems with quantitative accounting

    • 3 Videos
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3 Videos

  • Problems with quantitative accounting
  • Exosomatic Metabolism
  • EROI a critical appraisal

The analysis of the metabolic pattern of energy

    • 3 Videos
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3 Videos

  • Energy grammar
  • Functional and structural components
  • Quality of PES

A critical appraisal of existing narratives about alternative energy sources

    • 3 Videos
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3 Videos

  • Energy efficiency for policy targets
  • The problem with agro-biofuels
  • Energiewende and the problem of intermittents

Untitled Lesson

    • 1 Assignment
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1 Assignment

  • Quiz 4

Defining grammars for water accounting

    • 3 Videos
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3 Videos

  • Water analysis in “nexus thinking”
  • A taxonomy for water analyses
  • Multi-scale grammars for water

Application of grammars to the analysis of water metabolism

    • 3 Videos
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3 Videos

  • The case of Mauritius island
  • The societal metabolism of water
  • The ecosystem metabolism of water

Unsustainability of existing trends in water metabolism

    • 3 Videos
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3 Videos

  • Incoherent water and food policies
  • Food security vs. water security
  • Water-energy nexus: fracking

Check what you have learnt

    • 1 Assignment
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1 Assignment

  • Quiz 5

Complementary readings

    • 1 Readings
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1 Readings

  • Water metabolism of social-ecological systems

Studying the profile of human activities: the implications of demographic variables

    • 3 Videos
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3 Videos

  • Time use and demographic structure
  • Time profile and types of society
  • Paid work overhead

The use of GIS and land use to study rural metabolic patterns

    • 3 Videos
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3 Videos

  • Metabolic pattern of rural communities
  • Participatory integrated mapping of land uses
  • GIS tools for diagnosis and simulation

Checks on the sustainability of the metabolic patterns of SES

    • 3 Videos
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3 Videos

  • A general framework of analysis of the metabolic pattern of Social-Ecological Systems
  • Studying viability and desirability using the concept of Bio-Economic Pressure
  • Studying feasibility using the concepts of DPSIR and Environmental Impact Matrix

Check what you have learnt

    • 1 Assignment
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1 Assignment

  • Quiz 6

Complementary readings

    • 2 Readings
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2 Readings

  • Between theory and quantification
  • Report of the Catalonia case study

Relational analysis of the metabolic pattern of Social-Ecological systems

    • 3 Videos
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3 Videos

  • Basic Concepts of relational analysis
  • The concept of processor
  • The “tool-kit” to study feasibility, viability and desirability

The analysis of the NEXUS in a farming system (Almeria, Spain)

    • 3 Videos
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3 Videos

  • Framing the analysis
  • Procedure for accounting
  • Illustration of results

The integrated analysis of the NEXUS in action: using alternative energy to desalinate water userd in agricultural production in Canary Islands

    • 3 Videos
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3 Videos

  • The framing of the problem
  • The procedure of accounting with data
  • Illustration of the results

To practice (optional activity)

    • 1 PeerReview
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1 Peer Review

  • Designing a processor for a coal power plant

Check what you have learnt

    • 1 Assignment
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1 Assignment

  • Quiz 7 (when starting the quiz, see the instructions)

The Cartesian dream

    • 3 Videos
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3 Videos

  • The dream, from Francis Bacon to Vanevar Bush
  • The undoing of the dream
  • Trust in Science and trust in quantification

Post-normal science

    • 3 Videos
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3 Videos

  • What is PNS? Is it useful? PNS and quantification
  • All models are wrong, some are useful … but when?
  • Sensitivity auditing

Quantitative story telling

    • 3 Videos
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3 Videos

  • Why frames matter; social construction of ignorance
  • A field example
  • Quantitative story telling

Check what you have learnt

    • 1 Assignment
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1 Assignment

  • Quiz 8

Complementary readings

    • 4 Readings
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4 Readings

  • What is science’s crisis really about?
  • Post-normal institutional identities
  • What is wrong with evidence based policy, and how can it be improved
  • Further reading

Auto Summary

Explore the Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems with this insightful course focusing on the water-energy-food nexus. Led by Coursera, this professional-level course spans 1380 minutes and dives into transdisciplinary thinking, equipping you with tools for quantitative analysis and decision-making. Ideal for learners interested in Science & Engineering, it offers practical case studies from various countries, highlighting issues like energy poverty and water scarcity. Subscription options include Starter and Professional, making it accessible to a broad audience.

Mario Giampietro
Instructors

Mario Giampietro

Andrea Saltelli
Instructors

Andrea Saltelli

Tarik Serrano
Instructors

Tarik Serrano