Participatory Causal Loop Mapping of the Adoption of Organic Farming in Nigeria.

Contrary to the expectations of promoters of organic agriculture, the adoption of the technology by smallholder farmers in Africa has been low and slow, for reasons not well understood. Existing studies on the topic mostly estimated the effect of some variables on the adoption of the technology. But adoption is characterized by complex and dynamic interactions of many interconnected factors, which existing studies overlooked.

Emergency Food Provision for Children and Families during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Examples from Five U.S. Cities.

As lockdown and school closure policies were implemented in response to the coronavirus, the federal government provided funding and relaxed its rules to support emergency food provision, but not guidance on best practices for effectiveness. Accordingly, cities developed a diverse patchwork of emergency feeding programs. This article uses qualitative data to provide insight into emergency food provision developed in five cities to serve children and families.

The energy crises revealed by COVID: Intersections of Indigeneity, inequity, and health.

The global COVID-19 pandemic is a health crisis, an economic crisis, and a justice crisis. It also brings to light multiple ongoing, underlying social crises. The COVID-19 crisis is actively revealing crises of energy sovereignty in at least four ways.

Perceptions and exposure to climate events along agricultural value chains: Evidence from Nigeria.

Africa's food systems are among the most vulnerable sectors to climate risk. Unfortunately, numerous activities along food supply chains (production, processing, storage, marketing and consumption) are also important contributors to climate change. Despite the differential effect of climate events on activities along food supply chains and vice versa, most climate change perception studies in agriculture focus on producers, particularly crop farmers.

Participatory Modeling of Climate Change Impacts on Public Health in Long Beach, California: Discussion from a Workshop Hosted by the RAND Frederick S. Pardee Center for Longer Range Global Policy and the Future Human Condition.

Participatory modeling aims to incorporate stakeholders into the process of developing models for the purpose of eliciting information, appropriately reflecting stakeholder interests and concerns, and improving stakeholder understanding, and acceptance of the analysis. Participatory modeling, using causal loop diagramming (CLD), was used to explore the impact of climate change on public health in Long Beach, California. CLD, commonly used in participatory modeling, provided useful information to serve as the basis for a quantitative system dynamics model to protect the citizens of Long Beach, and potentially other cities or regions affected by climate change.

Purpose, processes, partnerships, and products: four Ps to advance participatory socio-environmental modeling.

Including stakeholders in environmental model building and analysis is an increasingly popular approach to understanding ecological change. This is because stakeholders often hold valuable knowledge about socio-environmental dynamics and collaborative forms of modeling produce important boundary objects used to collectively reason about environmental problems. Although the number of participatory modeling (PM) case studies and the number of researchers adopting these approaches has grown in recent years, the lack of standardized reporting and limited reproducibility have prevented PM's establishment and advancement as a cohesive field of study.

TMDL implementation in agricultural landscapes: a communicative and systemic approach.

Increasingly, total maximum daily load (TMDL) limits are being defined for agricultural watersheds. Reductions in non-point source pollution are often needed to meet TMDL limits, and improvements in management of annual crops appear insufficient to achieve the necessary reductions. Increased adoption of perennial crops and other changes in agricultural land use also appear necessary, but face major barriers.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions for climate stabilization: framing regional options.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated that stabilizing atmospheric CO2 concentrations will require reduction of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by as much as 80% by 2050. Subnational efforts to cut emissions will inform policy development nationally and globally. We projected GHG mitigation strategies for Minnesota, which has adopted a strategic goal of 80% emissions reduction by 2050.