Marine ecosystems play a vital role in China’s socio-economic development and food security. The marine economy has grown rapidly since the beginning of the21st century and has become one of the fastest growing sectors of China’s overall economy, contributing toover 9% of the country’s annual GDP in recent years. Such rapid growth has greatly improved the livelihoodsof China’s coastal and fishing populations, but it has also impacted the marine environment throughoverfishing, coastal habitat loss, and pollution.
FSE director Roz Naylor will give the opening plenary lecture at the 2nd International Conference on Global Food Security on October 12, 2015 at Cornell University. Naylor is William Wrigley Professor in Earth System Science, and senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford.
In addition to Naylor's lecture on "Food security in a commodity-driven world," several FSE researchers will give talks and poster sessions during the five-day conference, including professors Marshall Burke and Eric Lambin, visiting scholar Jennifer Burney, postdoctoral scholar Meha Jain, and doctoral candidate Elsa Ordway.
This project focuses on private and public sector strategies for promoting sustainable palm oil, with sustainability defined by environmental, social, and economic objectives. The main goals are:
Four FSE affiliates are among the recipients of new Environmental Venture Projects (EVP) research grants from the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. The Stanford Woods Institute's EVP seed grant program has spurred cross-disciplinary faculty collaborations that have addressed global environmental and sustainability challenges since 2004.
FSE director Roz Naylor, deputy director David Lobell, and faculty affiliates Marshall Burke and Eran Bendavid will work on several projects over the next two years aimed at finding solutions to these problems.
A research team led by FSE director Rosamond Naylor has won a $400,000 multi-year grant to study how to create sustainable palm oil supply chains that promote economic growth and environmental sustainability in Indonesia and West Africa.
Palm oil has become one of the world’s fastest growing and most valuable agricultural commodities. Global production of palm oil doubled in both volume and area each decade between 1970 and 2010, and is expected to double again by 2025. The windfall profits from this rapid expansion have come at a cost of tropical deforestation, biodiversity loss and rising greenhouse gas emissions, and in many cases the economic benefits have bypassed local smallholder farmers.
"When we talk about sustainability in the palm oil industry, we mean more than saving trees," said Naylor. "The question we are getting at with this project is how can the industry boost rural incomes and alleviate poverty among smallholder farmers, while also reducing deforestation and carbon emissions. We are able to tackle this problem from social, economic and environmental angles because we have a truly cross-disciplinary group of researchers. That's a key strength of this team, and a key strength of Stanford."
Naylor and her team of Stanford faculty, scholars and students will undertake the three-year project with funding from the Stanford Global Development and Poverty Initiative (GDP), launched in Spring 2014. GDP aims to transform Stanford’s capacity to speak to the challenges of poverty and development. This year, GDP awarded more than $2 million to 13 faculty research teams from across the university.
The new project marks the first venture that connects Stanford’s expertise in sustainability with the Graduate School of Business’ experience in value chain innovations. The team will conduct an evaluation of value chain opportunities for sustainable palm oil production, build corporate partnerships to improve smallholder incomes, and engage in policy advising.
GDP is a joint initiative of the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies (SEED) and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). SEED is housed within the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Rosamond Naylor is William Wrigley Professor of Earth System Science and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and at FSI.
FSE director Roz Naylor has been selected to deliver the 6th annual Ned Ames Honorary Lecture at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, NY on Friday, April 24. Her lecture on "Feeding the World in the 21st Century," is free and open to the public, and a video recording of the event will be available on the Cary Institute's website shortly after the talk.
Each year Stanford experts from a range of disciplines meet to discuss the interconnections and interactions among humanity's needs for and use of food, energy, water and the effect they have on climate and conflict. These experts will illustrate and evaluate some of the ways in which decisions in one resource area can lead to trade-offs or co-benefits in others, and discuss opportunities to make decisions that can have positive benefits in one area while avoiding negative or unintended consequences in other areas. This year, in celebration of our 5th anniversary of Connecting the Dots, we return to the food nexus.
Confirmed Speakers
Keynote Speaker: Karen Ross, Secretary of California Department of Food and Agriculture
Professor Stacey Bent, TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy, Precourt Institute for Energy, Chemical Engineering
Professor Roz Naylor, Center on Food Security and the Environment, Environmental Earth System Science, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor David Lobell, Center on Food Security and the Environment, Environmental Earth System Science, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment
Professor Marshall Burke (food - conflict nexus), Environmental Earth System Science, Center on Food Security and the Environment
Professor Steve Luby (food - health nexus), Stanford Medicine, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, Freeman Spogli Institue for International Studies
Professor Scott Rozelle (food, education and development nexus), Co-director, Rural Education Action Program, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, Center on Food Security and the Environment
Student-led Breakout Sessions
Christopher Seifert, Graduate Student, Environmental Earth System Science "Boondoggle or Risk Reducer? Crop insurance as the farm subsidy of the 21st century"
William Chapman, Graduate Student, CEE-Atmosphere and Energy "No Red Meat or a New Electric Vehicle, Food Choices and Emissions"
Priya Fielding-Singh, PhD Candidate, Sociology Maria Deloso, Coterminal B.S/M.A. Candidate, Environmental Earth System Science "From Farm to Lunch Tray: Toward a Healthy and Sustainable Federal School Lunch Program"
Rebecca Gilsdorf, PhD Candidate, Civil & Environmental Engineering Angela Harris, PhD Candidate, Civil & Environmental Engineering "Poop and Pesticides: Looking beyond production to consider food contamination"
The Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki
Environment and Energy Building
Stanford University
473 Via Ortega, Office 363
Stanford, CA 94305
(650) 723-5697
(650) 725-1992
0
roz@stanford.edu
Senior Fellow, Stanford Woods Institute and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William Wrigley Professor of Earth System Science
Senior Fellow and Founding Director, Center on Food Security and the Environment
Roz_low_res_9_11_cropped.jpg
PhD
Rosamond Naylor is the William Wrigley Professor in Earth System Science, a Senior Fellow at Stanford Woods Institute and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the founding Director at the Center on Food Security and the Environment, and Professor of Economics (by courtesy) at Stanford University. She received her B.A. in Economics and Environmental Studies from the University of Colorado, her M.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics, and her Ph.D. in applied economics from Stanford University. Her research focuses on policies and practices to improve global food security and protect the environment on land and at sea. She works with her students in many locations around the world. She has been involved in many field-level research projects around the world and has published widely on issues related to intensive crop production, aquaculture and livestock systems, biofuels, climate change, food price volatility, and food policy analysis. In addition to her many peer-reviewed papers, Naylor has published two books on her work: The Evolving Sphere of Food Security (Naylor, ed., 2014), and The Tropical Oil Crops Revolution: Food, Farmers, Fuels, and Forests (Byerlee, Falcon, and Naylor, 2017).
She is a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America, a Pew Marine Fellow, a Leopold Leadership Fellow, a Fellow of the Beijer Institute for Ecological Economics, a member of Sigma Xi, and the co-Chair of the Blue Food Assessment. Naylor serves as the President of the Board of Directors for Aspen Global Change Institute, is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for Oceana and is a member of the Forest Advisory Panel for Cargill. At Stanford, Naylor teaches courses on the World Food Economy, Human-Environment Interactions, and Food and Security.
Ling Cao completed her Ph.D. in Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Trained as an agronomist and environmental scientist, she has focused on interdisciplinary research at the interface between the sustainability of food and natural systems. Her dissertation research quantitatively assessed the sustainability of emerging shrimp farming systems and technologies, and in particular focused on applying these results to producers and consumers in China and US. In early 2018, Cao was selected as a recipient of the “National Thousand Talents Program for Distinguished Young Scholars,” an initiative of the Chinese government to attract high-level talent from overseas to work full-time in China. In addition, she was also selected as a fellow of the “Shanghai Thousand Talents Program” which aims to recruit top-talent who are leaders in their fields to help enhance Shanghai's future development and sustainable competitiveness. Cao currently works as an associate professor in the Institute of Oceanographyat Shanghai Jiao Tung University and continues to work with Roz Naylor and colleagues on fisheries and aquaculture research.
Co-chair
Symposiums
The Importance of Marine Fisheries and Ecosystems for Food Security In China
