Systems Thinking is the Key to Sustainable Resource Use

Source: https://www.water-energy-food.org/fileadmin/user_upload/files/2016/graphics/grafik_nexus-planetengetriebe.jpg

This blog documents my journey through the class Navigating the Food, Water, and Energy Nexus, which is taught by Dr. Culhane at the University of South Florida.

Growing food requires inputs, notably of water and energy in the form of fertilizer, cultivation, processing, packaging, and shipping. Growing food in turn impacts the local water supply through runoff, which may contain nutrients and pesticides, which in turn affect the food chain. When the price of energy goes up, the price of food goes up. When the water supply is affected by weather conditions like flood or drought, or when groundwater levels are depleted, our food security is threatened.

Water is used to generate electricity, either directly through hydropower, wave, or tidal energy generation systems, or indirectly as fission, combustion, or some other source of heat use water to make steam, which in turn spins turbines. Water quality can be affected by the extraction of energy sources such as coal and natural gas; fracking in particular is highly water-consumptive, and coal mining is particularly polluting. Waste heat carried by water from power plants into waterways can damage ecosystems by reducing the amount of dissolved oxygen present, which affects animal life. In turn, energy is used to pump water. This is part of agricultural energy consumption, since it takes energy to pump water to farms that use it for irrigation. Desalinating seawater or treating sewage also consumes energy while increasing the supply of fresh water that is available for human use.

The interdependency of our food, water and energy supply, as well as their impact on the environment through impacts such as pollution emissions and global climate change, shows that you can never do just one thing when it comes to life systems. Everything from sun to soil, from resource stocks to waste sinks, from generation to reclamation, is interconnected. Systems thinking allows us to analyze not just chains of cause-and-effect, but also the feedback loops that moderate or exaggerate interactions over time.

Understanding systems and how their components interrelate will allow humanity to evolve and develop sustainably. Life's patterns tend to be mutually nourishing and cyclical. Working with these patterns allows human behavior to enhance rather than degrade the systems we are part of.