Food and Water

Increasing global demands for food and freshwater are pressuring the world’s land and ocean resources and are compromising the integrity of earth-system functioning. Human exploitation of natural resources has resulted in the degradation of land and vegetation over vast areas, overexploitation of marine resources, depletion of aquifers, unsustainable restructuring of natural landscapes, and losses of biodiversity. These drivers are projected to persistently impact ecosystem services beyond those merely relating to provisioning, trigger ecological and evolutionary responses, and be aggravated by climate change. Integrated solution strategies for managing the confluent large-scale risks under such altered conditions are as yet poorly researched, due to information paucity and gaps in understanding total system behavior.

Food and Water Research at IIASA

IIASA pursues a systems approach in which food and water resources are viewed as embedded in the wider context of land, marine, and ecosystem management, conditioned by natural resource endowments, and dependent on socioeconomic developments and sustainable growth. Research in the "Food and water" global problem area concentrates on solution-oriented approaches within the following four integrative research themes:

• food security,
• integrated watershed management,
• optimizing multiple uses of terrestrial ecosystem services, and
• safeguarding sustainable seafood and aquatic ecosystems.

More information about current research in IIASA's ‘Food and water’ global problem area can be accessed by clicking the links below and right.

Evolution and Ecology

The Evolution and Ecology (EEP) Program's work on the Integrated assessment of fishery systems and on Evolutionarily sustainable consumption examines options and challenges for the development of aquatic food resources. More.

Ecosystems Services & Management

The Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program aims to improve our understanding of ecosystems in today’s changing world—in particular, the current state of ecosystems, and their ecological thresholds and buffering capacities. More

Risk, Policy, and Vulnerability

The Risk, Policy and Vulnerability (RPV) Program’s research includes extensive work on resilience and adaptive capacity of social-ecological systems. Current work explores options for improving water retention as an adaptive response to flood and drought risk. More

Advanced Systems Analysis

The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program contributes the following project to the Food and Water Research Area: Modeling the Structure of Forests. More

Mitigation of Air Pollution & Greenhouse Gases

The Mitigation of Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases (MAG) program explores the role of the global nitrogen cycle, and how appropriate management could benefit food production, local pollution, and global climate change. For example, the Effects of Climate Change on Air Pollution and Response Strategies for European Ecosystems (ECLAIRE) project looks at the effects of climate change in Europe. More

Back to Global Problem Areas

• Energy and Climate Change
• Poverty and Equity

Further Research areas

• Drivers of Global Transformations
• Policy and Governance
• Advanced Systems Analysis

Last edited: 03 September 2012