Developing integrated environmental indicators for sustainable global food production and trade

拟议的研究旨在提高对全球粮食生产和贸易的环境影响和可持续性的认识，并提出减轻这种影响的解决方案。为我们提供基本资源和生态系统服务的自然环境正受到人类活动日益增加的压力。重要的是，由于人口增长和社会经济发展，对粮食的需求不断增加，导致农业对水、土地和肥料的密集使用。灌溉占全球淡水抽取量的三分之二以上，农业占地球陆地面积的三分之一以上，排放的温室气体占全球排放量的四分之一。此外，到2050年，粮食生产将需要大幅增加，以养活另外约20亿人。因此，确保环境可持续的充足粮食生产是一项艰巨而紧迫的全球性挑战。为了应对这一挑战，我的研究将通过考虑世界各地不同的实践和当地条件，为我们目前对农业多重环境影响的理解提供关键改进。这将有助于对农业可持续性进行全面评估，并有助于量化与不同农业管理战略有关的权衡。实际上，由于农业做法是紧密联系在一起的（例如水和土壤管理），因此必须考虑到所有主要的环境方面，以避免侧重于单一方面的战略产生意想不到的后果。研究还将考虑贸易;随着最近的全球化，国际食品贸易自20世纪80年代以来迅速增长，使主要出口导向型农业地区得以发展。贸易在全球农业系统中的这一关键作用将被纳入对实现环境可持续农业的潜在途径的评估，拟议的研究涉及评估实现可持续农业的途径所必需的关键整合领域：（1）对环境影响的全面评估，（2）对一系列产品的整合（农作物和牲畜），（3）创新的可持续性定量措施和（4）同时将所有环境压力与全球贸易联系起来。为了达到我的研究目标，我将结合联合收割机新兴的环境数据集和模型，通过水和土地资源的使用，富营养化（营养物渗漏造成的生态系统污染）和气候变化。然后，我将运用创新技术，将这些估计数联合收割机组合成全球粮食生产环境可持续性的空间详细指标。这个雄心勃勃的创新研究项目将提供第一个工具，同时评估粮食系统的主要环境影响。它非常重要，因为它针对的是环境可持续性和粮食安全的关键全球挑战。然后，我将联合收割机与国际粮食贸易数据相结合，分析粮食生产地区和偏远消费者之间日益重要的联系。最后，我将使用开发的全球数据集，指标和贸易分析，进行国家层面的案例研究，评估实现粮食生产和供应的环境可持续性的途径。研究借鉴了环境足迹分析，已成功地用于了解和激发政策对全球资源使用和稀缺性的兴趣。最近，水、粮食、贸易和气候之间的相互作用在许多研究中得到越来越多的认识，这些研究指出需要采取多学科和跨部门的方法。利用最先进的新兴环境数据集，这项工作将产生关于全球重要环境过程的新知识，并概述与政策相关的见解。

The proposed research aims to improve understanding of the environmental impact and sustainability of global food production and trade, and to propose solutions to alleviate this impact. The natural environment, providing us with essential resources and ecosystem services, is under increasing pressure from human activities. Importantly, increasing demand for food, due to population growth and socio-economic development, have led to the intensive use of water, land, and fertilisers in agriculture. Irrigation accounts for more than two thirds of freshwater withdrawn globally, and agriculture occupies more than one third of the Earth's land surface and emits a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, food production will need to significantly increase to feed about two additional billion people by 2050. Ensuring environmentally sustainable, sufficient food production is thus a difficult and pressing global challenge.To address this challenge, my research will provide critical improvements in our current understanding of the multiple environmental impacts of agriculture, by accounting for different practices and local conditions across the world. This will allow a comprehensive assessment of agricultural sustainability and help to quantify trade-offs associated with different agricultural management strategies. Indeed, as agricultural practices are tightly linked (e.g. water and soil management), it is essential to consider all major environmental aspects to avoid the unintended consequences of strategies focused on a single aspect. The research will also consider trade; following recent globalisation, international food trade has grown rapidly since the 1980s, allowing for the development of major export-oriented agricultural regions. This crucial role of trade in global agricultural systems will be integrated in the evaluation of potential pathways to achieve environmentally sustainable agriculture.The proposed research addresses critical areas of integration necessary to assess pathways to sustainable agriculture: (1) comprehensive estimation of environmental impacts, (2) integration across a range of products (crops and livestock), (3) innovative quantitative measures of sustainability and (4) simultaneous linking of all environmental stresses with global trade.To reach my research objectives, I will combine emerging environmental datasets and models to consistently estimate the potential environmental impacts of food production, via water and land resource use, eutrophication (ecosystem pollution through nutrient leakage) and climate change. I will then apply innovative techniques to combine these estimates into spatially detailed indicators of the environmental sustainability of global food production. This ambitious and innovative research project will provide the first tool to simultaneously evaluate the major environmental impacts of food systems. It is highly significant as it targets the key global challenges of environmental sustainability and food security. I will then combine the indicators with international food trade data to analyse the increasingly significant linkages between food producing regions and remote consumers. Finally, I will use the developed global datasets, indicators, and trade analysis to carry out country level case studies assessing pathways to achieving environmental sustainability of food production and supply.The research draws from environmental footprint analysis, which has been used successfully to both understand and stimulate policy interest in global resource use and scarcity. More recently, the interactions between water, food, trade and the climate have been increasingly recognised in many studies pinpointing the need for multi-disciplinary and cross-sectoral approaches. Using state-of-the-art, emerging environmental datasets, this work will generate new knowledge on globally significant environmental processes and profile policy relevant insights.