Ubiquitous Complexity!

I have never been so much proud of science of complexity unless Climate Smart Food conference which was held in Lund on 23-24 November. It was organized by Swedish Ministry of Agriculture on behalf of Swedish Presidency of the European Union.

The conference was about the climate impact of the entire food chain, i.e. from farm to fork to farm. At the beginning of the seminars, I really did not expect to hear anything about complexity and its themes and tools.
It was a great pleasure when Eskil Erlandsson, minister for agriculture, Johan Kuylenstierna from FAO, and Anita Wreford from Scottish Agriculture College, analyzed the role of adaptation in shadow of simplification and mitigation of effects of climate change.

In another presentation, Mr. Finn Rausing from Tetra Laval discussed about finding solution for complexity of food production and distribution as an important enabler of sustainable dairy chain.

I also tracked trace of complexity in Mads Greaker’s seminar from Statistics Norway/Göteborg University when he discoursed about Carbon leakage as one of the problems caused by imperfect climate treaties. Carbon leakage refers to the situation in which some countries efforts to reduce Green House Gas (GHG) emissions result in increased emission elsewhere. This is a very good example of paradoxes in complex systems.
Mads mentioned also difficulties in defining boundaries of the system for ‘climate friendly’ labeling of products. In another seminar regarding launch of new climate label for food in Sweden, Anna Richert from Swedish Seal discussed about emerging paradoxes in a holistic labeling system. Science of complexity is a solid tool for investigating boundaries and paradoxes of ‘climate friendly’ labeling of food and products.

Ulf Sonesson fron SIK was another speaker who explained complexity of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of a product as well as production and consumption systems of food chains. He also reminded the importance of systematic approach in simplification of the system.

Pascal Greverath, Chairman of Confedration of the Food and Drink Industries of the EU (CIAA) Environment Committee presented about ‘European Food Sustainable Consumption and Production Round Table (SCPRT)’ project. He emphasized necessity of understanding and considering complexity of the SCPRT for achieving its goals which are:
1) Establish scientifically reliable and uniform environmental assessment methodologies for food and drinks; 2) Identify suitable tools for voluntary communication to consumers and other stakeholders; 3) Promote and report on continuous environmental improvement along the entire food supply chain.

Richard Lowe, from European Livestock and Meat Trading Union (UECBV), discussed about complexity of meat supply chain and diversity of range of factors affecting Greenhouse Gas Emissions such as fertilizer use on pasture, animal feed production, land use change whether for animal feed or livestock grazing, animal waste and its treatment, methane emissions directly from ruminants as a consequence of the way they convert food to energy, meat packaging and processing, etc.

Finally, Inger Andersson, Director General of Swedish National Food Administration, raised this question that how is it possible to avoid the conflict of objectives between the limitations of environmental and climate effects and the free movement of goods? My answer to this question, undoubtedly, was analyzing such paradoxes and conflicts by complexity thinking!

As it sounds, complexity thinking is spreading in several natural and social sciences. That is why I have called this post ‘ubiquitous complexity’!

Running!

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up;
It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.

Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up;
It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.

It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or gazelle:
When the Sun comes up, you had better be running. (Adopted from Jim Wixom)