Introduction to the Lecture Series and Sustainability

This lecture addresses the sustainability problem by examining trends in resource use. In particular, the lecture will look at ten synoptic trends which affect the future of food, an essential component of human life. This will show that there are important drivers of misalignment between human demand for resources and the supply of resources from the planet.

Consumption is accelerating and, as a result of this, waste will continue to increase, and this includes greenhouse gases. Technological development has the potential to transform how we live, but this needs to be associated with the decoupling of economic growth from consumption.

Transformation of the food system needs us to grow five to ten times more food per unit area of land by the middle of the century. This scale of transformation is not matched by the investments we need to make in research and development, but progress is being made.

The dilemmas arising from these challenges emerge as three distinct social discourses: 'tragedy', 'adaptation' and 'survivalist'. Each of these promote very different solutions but each also fails in various key ways. The question, then, is how does humanity move forward?

Lecture and Q&A date: Thursday 15 July 2021, 6pm to 8pm

Small group session: Wednesday 21 July, 6pm to 7pm

Speaker