Overcoming climate change adaptation barriers: A study on food–energy–water impacts of the average American diet by demographic group

Abstract

Effectively adapting to climate change involves overcoming social and ecological system barriers.The present study uses a three-phase adaptation framework to propose adaptation strategies aimed at overcoming socioecological barriers of the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus. Cradleto-farm-gate land, greenhouse gas (GHG), and water impacts-that derive from food consumption in the United States-are analyzed and differentiated by major demographic groups (Black, Latinx, and White). Results indicate that the White demographic yields the highest per capita GHG (680 kg of CO 2 eq⋅year −1 ) and water impacts (328,600 L⋅year −1 ) from food consumption, whereas the Black demographic yields the highest per capita land impacts (1,770 m 2 ⋅year −1 ) from food consumption. Our findings suggest that obtaining data with the intention of building consensus across sociodemographic lines overcomes barriers in the understanding phase, leading to increased social receptivity for many planning and managing phase processes. Specifically, we find that identifying and developing leaders who possess the cognitive and interpersonal capacity to manage many variables and stakeholders is key to assessing and selecting adaptation options in the planning phase. We also propose using government programming to encourage environmentally friendly food purchasing behavior. Then, we discuss how our proposals could be used in adaptation feasibility and evaluation activities in the managing phase. In all, these findings facilitate the development of improved climate change adaptation and policy by satisfying the understanding phase of the climate change adaptation framework, establishing a cross-disciplinary methodological approach to addressing socioecological problems, and providing useful FEW impact data for FEW nexus and climate change researchers.

Distinguishing Environmental Impacts of Household Food-Spending Patterns Among U.S. Demographic Groups

“…First, using mean values for FEW impact estimations and FCI calculations can skew results, in that not considering the share of purchases of less impactful to more impactful versions of foods (i.e., foods that are more land, GHG, or water intensive than others) can hide more specific food-impact patterns across demographic groupings. For instance, land FEW-impact estimates show that minimum beef rates (19.902 m 2 kg ) are close to the rate for pork (19 m 2 kg ) (Bozeman et al, 2019). However, the maximum land FEW impact for beef is 71.002 m 2 kg .…”

“…Americans consume over 7,000 different kinds of foods that make up more than 500 food commodities, and basic food items make up the constituents of these food commodities (USEPA FCID, 2018). After reviewing LCA study methodological approaches and data availability bounds of key FEW sources, a cradle-to-farmgate boundary was selected (Bozeman et al, 2019).…”

“…This search utilized findings primarily from centralized databases maintained by the Food and Agriculture Organization, OpenLCA, Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition, and the United States Department of Agriculture; and supplemented by literature reviews. Basic food items that had cradle-tofarm-gate land, GHG, and water data available were aligned with USEPA FCID (2018) food commodities to estimate the expanse of foods consumed in the United States (Bozeman et al, 2019).…”

“…In other words, Native American, Pacific Islander, and Asian populations have very different food-consumption profiles and cannot be meaningfully analyzed as a single group. As such, analysis of this other demographic group would not yield meaningful insights (Bozeman et al, 2019). Furthermore, the Latinx demographic-that is, Mexican American and other Hispanic demographic categories as shown in the EPA FCID database (USEPA FCID, 2018)-is termed ''Latinx'' in effort to align with modern intersectional, gender nonbinary, social terminology (García, 2018).…”

Industrial ecology in support of climate change adaptation

“…(2019) adapt material flow analysis to assess the vulnerability of a region's resources to climate change related natural disasters. The contributions by Bozeman, Bozeman, and Theis (2019) and Stadler and Houghton (2019) push industrial ecology approaches to acknowledge other domains to address climate adaptation challenges. Bozeman et al.…”