Tag: Poster 173

Climate Change and Indigenous Food Systems in the Andes

Presenter(s): Haley Nicholson − Environmental Studies

Faculty Mentor(s): Mark Carey

Poster 173

Research Area: Social Science

Climate change will have substantial impacts on agriculture which may affect our modern food system as we know it. Despite all of the climate change research that has been conducted, there is not enough importance placed on how climate change impacts indigenous food systems, particularly in the Andes region. Indigenous food systems are at particularly high risk for adverse climate change impacts because of their reliance on environmental predictability. Modern climate changes result in immediate nutrition and food security consequences for farmers in the Andean region, which is why it is so important that these impacts and possible mitigation strategies are studied. Through research in various peer-reviewed journals and United Nations and World Bank reports I will discuss how climate change has resulted in decreased food sovereignty, security, and nutrition for indigenous food systems in the Andes. I will also examine how climate change has already spurred adaptation strategies based on traditional knowledge of the agricultural landscape in the Andes. These adaptation strategies demonstrate the importance of traditional knowledge in the face of climate change.

Diet and the Environment

Presenter(s): Alice Floyd-Preston

Co Presenter(s): Jay Lopez, Zach Colligan, Jordan Hankins

Faculty Mentor(s): Sarah Stoeckl

Poster 173

Session: Environmental Leaders ARC

In the sphere of sustainable living, veganism is hailed as the ideal diet to reduce environmental harm and degradation because plants require fewer resources and veganism does not contribute to the animal agriculture industry. Numerous scientific studies have demonstrated that a vegan diet emits less carbon than a traditional omnivorous diet but these studies are flawed because they do not consider all of the foods vegans consume. Many vegans supplement their diet with vegan substitutes that are often made with imported ingredients and rely on intense food processing and transportation to get to consumer. The goal of this research project is to analyze the ingredients and transportation of vegan substitutes and compare them to their non-vegan counterparts to determine if these alternatives are really better for the environment. In this research project, our primary indicator of sustainability is carbon emitted per pound. While carbon emissions does not illustrate the full picture, it is the easiest way to quantify environmental damages. Going into this project, our hypothesis is that the biggest indicator of environmental harm would not necessarily be the carbon emissions of the food itself, but how far it had to travel to get there. We thought vegan foods would have lower carbon emissions but since they had to be transported longer distances, they might have similar emissions to their non-vegan counterpart. The conclusions of this paper will add nuance to the discussion of diet and the environment and help consumers make more educated decisions.