Our first objective aims to better integrate environmental knowledge across disciplines and sectors.
The Global FEWture Alliance focuses on ways to improve connectivity among UMD units, international partners, and key stakeholders engaged in FEW-related work. Too often, environmental disciplines remain siloed in traditional fields of the natural and social sciences, agriculture, engineering, and humanities, with few opportunities to achieve interdisciplinary synthesis.
In order to accelerate and expand our impact, we seek ways to coordinate and integrate food, energy, and water solutions together. These solutions are informed by diverse experts who perceive the challenge from distinct but complementary perspectives.
For example, rainwater irrigation of urban farm plots is a solution that should be informed not only by experts in microbial water quality and pathogens, but also by agricultural plans that maximize nutrition and community public health, factor in climate change scenarios, and enrich these scientific perspectives with humanist environmental justice and community history.