New IDB Funded Project to Carry Out a Water-Energy-Food Nexus Analysis in Latin America and the Caribbean Using a Coupled Physical and Socio-economic Accounting Framework

Global agricultural commodities are projected to continue expanding over the next few decades to meet the increasing demand in developing countries where population and income will keep growing. Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries are not only experiencing fast growth of their economy and consumption, but also playing a significant role in global trade markets for agricultural commodities and natural resources. In a tele-connected world, goods and services consumed in one country are often produced in other countries and exchanged via international trade Thus demand is increasingly met through global supply chains involving countries that are situated in far geographical distances from one another, and processes at each stage of the supply chain may cause local and regional environmental issues such as water scarcity, deforestation and other types of land conversions. To prevent the adverse environmental impacts of socio‐economic developments, it is important to understand the spatial linkages between production and consumption within the LAC countries as well as the connections with the global market and project future demand of natural resources in the LAC region. This new Inter-American Development Bank funded project led by GEOG researchers, Drs. Kuishuang Feng, Giovanni Baiocchi and Laixiang Sun, will focus on revealing the pathways through which the population change, economic growth, and the associated consumption of goods and services in LAC countries and the other part of the world lead to the demand for natural resource in the LAC countries. In addition, a web-based mapping and visualization platform will be developed to allow for selection and visualization of modeling results.

Published on Sun, 09/08/2019 - 22:41