Page - 30 - in options, Volume winter 2014/2015

young scientists 30 options + winter 2014/2015 www.iiasa.ac.at people at iiasa On 7 August 2014 participants in IIASA’s Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) invited Institute scientists and staff to a workshop addressing five major questions regarding the future of humanity: adaptation to changing environments; planetary boundaries and resource constraints; quality of life; conflict management; and the morality and ethics of science and technology. The impetus for the workshop came from a lecture at IIASA by  Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, author of the 2009 book, Factor  5: Transforming the Global Economy through 80% Increase in Resource Productivity. Weizsäcker spoke about how increasing efficiency improvements by a factor of five in some economic sectors, while maintaining the quality of service and wellbeing, can help achieve sustainability. When the YSSP participants later discussed the lecture, they felt compelled to initiate a larger discussion on the subject of global challenges. “We realized that there is a need for more radical rethinking of existing paradigms,” said Fabian Schipfer, who organized the workshop along with fellow 2014 YSSP participants Mikko Dufva, Lukas Figge, Edoardo Borgomeo, and Thomas Schinko. The organizers started by surveying YSSP participants to identify questions for discussion. The workshop included small group discussions, followed by a larger group discussion to share insights among the full group. Co-organizer Edordo Borgomeo said, “The workshop provided an opportunity to leave our own jargon-laden scientific ‘silos’ and discuss challenges faced by humanity and how we might address them.” KL www.iiasa.ac.at/yssp During the 2013/14 Southern African Young Scientists Summer Program (SA-YSSP), Delin Fang explored the effectiveness of a water conservation scheme in an arid region of Northwest China. In April she published a paper on her results in conjunction with her two SA-YSSP supervisors and her PhD advisor from Beijing Normal University. The water conservation scheme in question was in the Ganzhou District in the Heihe River Basin. The river, which flows about 821 km from the Qilian Mountains to the Gobi Desert, has abundant water resources. But rapid socioeconomic development and increasing population density in the upper and middle reaches of the Heihe result in uneven water distribution downstream. As the main water consumption in Ganzou is from farming, livestock, and agriculture, the government wished to reduce agricultural water consumption here to allow more water to flow through to the lower reaches. Most models developed for water system analysis ignore cycling and the indirect flows associated with importing and exporting products that contain water or have consumed water during the production process. This so-called embodied or hidden water is vital for an integrated view of water utilization efficiency. In their study Fang and co-authors used Network Environ Analysis (NEA), a formal, quantitative methodology to account for cycling and indirect flows. This approach can show the efficiency of water utilization from a holistic perspective and investigate how various components of the system are linked to each other and to the overall system. From their NEA analysis, the researchers concluded that the current water conservation scheme is neither rational nor effective and that, in a next step, water resource donation and extraction relationships need to be studied. Fang says, “I was lucky to have been selected to attend the SA-YSSP. The research that I did during this exciting program helped further my PhD studies.” KP Further info Fang D, Fath BD, Chen B, Scharler UM (2014). Network environ analysis for socio-economic water system. Ecological Indicators 47:80–88 [doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2014.04.046]. Challenges for humanity —and for researchers A workshop organized by IIASA Young Scientists Summer Program participants brings a new perspective to global challenges Rational water use A 2013/14 SA-YSSP participant from China finds hidden water in  her country’s agricultural system Workshop participants (left to right) Margaret  Garcia, Miho  Kamei, Thomas  Schinko, Farid Karimi Delin Fang in Cape Town, South Africa, during the 2013/14 SA-YSSP