Grand Challenges: Global FEWture Alliance
Transformative Food-Energy-Water Solutions to Ensure Community Resilience in a Changing Climate
Summary:
Climate change, population growth, and urbanization are crippling global food, energy, and water (FEW) systems and harming public health, with low-income communities and people of color bearing the heaviest burdens. There are 1.3 billion people worldwide who are food insecure, 2 billion people who lack access to safe drinking water, and 770 million people who lack access to electricity. These challenges will only grow worse over the next 30 years. By 2050, global food production will need to increase by 70%, 5 billion people will live in water-scarce areas, causing global water demand to increase by 55%, and global energy demand will increase by 50%.
To date, solutions addressing these pervasive challenges have often been siloed and inequitable. Initiatives tend to focus on food production, access to water or access to energy technologies, but often fail to take into consideration all three vital resources along with the required capacity building and educational programs necessary to sustain interventions.
The Global FEWture Alliance—a UMD-based international alliance—will scale technology-based solutions, community-driven capacity building, and experiential education focused at the food-energy-water-climate-health nexus. Through our holistic, interdisciplinary, systems-based approach, we will alleviate food and water insecurity, protect environmental and global public health, and bolster community resilience in a changing climate.
Our integrated, multi-sectoral approach will result in solutions, from local to global scales, that address at least 13 of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Here at UMD, the Global FEWture Alliance will advance all four strategic commitments of the new Strategic Plan: taking on humanity’s grand challenges, investing in people and communities, partnering to advance the common good, and reimagining learning.
Team Members:
 PI: Amy Sapkota (SPHL), MPower Professor, Environmental Health; Interim Director, Maryland Institute for Applied Enviromental Health; Director, CONSERVE Center of Excellence; and Director of the UMD Global STEWARDS NSF NRT |
 Dina Borzekowski (SPHL), Research Professor, Behavioral and Community Health Director, Global Health Initiative |
 Rachel Rosenberg Goldstein (SPHL), Assistant Professor, Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health |
 Rianna Murray (SPHL), Assistant Research Professor and Graduate Director, Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health |
 Amir Sapkota (SPHL), Professor and Chair, Epidemiology and Biostatistics |
 Leena Malayil (SPHL), Assistant Research Professor, Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health |
 Shirley Micallef (AGNR), Associate Professor, Food Safety, Plant Science and Landscape Architecture |
 Stephanie Lansing (AGNR), Professor, Environmental Science and Technology |
 Gili Marbach-Ad (CMNS), Director, CMNS Teaching & Learning Center, Research Professor |
 Xin-Zhong Liang (CMNS), Professor, Atmospheric and Oceanic Science |
 Jennifer Cotting (ARCH), Director, Environmental Finance Center, School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation |
 Allen Davis (ENGR), Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering |
Partners:
 Yael Mishael, Associate Professor and Director, Center for Sustainability, Hebrew University of Jerusalem |
 Tomer Malchi, Executive Director and Co-Founder, CultivAid |
 Clive Lipchin, Director of the Center for Transboundary Water Management, Arava Institute |
 Biraj Karmacharya, Director, Public Health / Community Programs / Global Engagement, Kathmandu University, Dhulikhel Hospital |
 Shree Krishna Dhital, Executive Director, Sanskriti Farms & Research Center |
 Thurka Sangaramoorthy, Professor, American University and Addis Ababa University |
News:
UMD Researchers Help Hyattsville’s Food Forests Look to the ‘FEWture’ (September 22, 2023)
Rising to a Grand Challenge: Food, Energy and Water in a Changing Climate (April 12, 2023)
Events:
Global FEWture Alliance International Webinar Series:
- Friday, Sept. 1, 2023, 9:00 am EST
The Maryland FEWture team
Speaker: Dr. Jen Cotting, Director Environmental Finance Center, University of Maryland
Topic: Advancing Sustainability at the Community Level - Friday, October 6, 2023
The Israel FEWture team - Friday, November 3, 2023
The Tanzania FEWture team - Friday, December 1, 2023
The Nepal FEWture team
Inaugural Global FEWture Alliance Symposium
January 19, 2024