Sustainable-food expert joins CU-Boulder faculty

By Marissa McNatt

Traveling to Vietnam to study pangolins (scaly anteaters) while earning his master’s in applied ecology and conservation from the University of East Anglia, UK, sparked Pete Newton’s interest in the social sciences, marking a turning point in his research career. To learn about pangolin ecology, Newton explains that it made sense for him to interview people who hunted pangolins illegally.

“Hunters are often the best naturalists, and we were ecologists wanting to learn to be effective at finding pangolins. But what turned out to be much more interesting was the environmental governance surrounding the hunting and conservation of the species,” Newton says.

Newton wanted to know about the incentives and tradeoffs surrounding these hunters’ decisions to illegally hunt pangolins, including the opportunities, the risks and the benefits, as well as how the forest protection department oversaw the forest.

What a consumer does in the United States can very genuinely affect what happens on the ground in Brazil via the chain of supply and demand and making choices about more-or-less sustainably produced commodities."Looking at how wildlife and forests were managed and governed in Vietnam, Newton went from having a pure interest in wildlife and ecology to becoming much more interested in the interactions between humans and the environment.

Newton later earned his doctorate in environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia, and he recently completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the School of Natural Resources & Environment at the University of Michigan.

Newton was attracted to the University of Colorado Boulder Environmental Studies Program—or ENVS—because of continued opportunities to do interdisciplinary work, including helping students to think from multiple perspectives and the chance to collaborate with other faculty interested in similar problems, but with different backgrounds.

He joined ENVS in spring 2015, based on a demand among the student body to learn more about sustainable food systems, both in the U.S. and internationally. Newton was the perfect candidate to teach on this topic.

“It’s something I’m really interested in and developing courses on. So, I’m hopeful that this can be a new dimension to the courses that are available here,” Newton says.

Currently, Newton is instructing the undergraduate course “Global Food Systems and Tropical Land Use Change,” a capstone course with 25 students enrolled, all ENVS majors. The course’s primary themes include the complexities of social and environmental systems around food production in the tropics, the scale of the environmental and social challenges, and the notion that the supply chain is international in scope, Newton explains.

To teach these critical lessons, Newton is drawing on a series of case studies, based on his past and current research experiences looking at cattle ranching in Brazil and palm oil production in Indonesia.

For instance, in Brazil, cattle ranching is a huge part of the national economy, contributing to many people’s livelihoods. Yet, cattle ranching and beef production are some of the biggest drivers of deforestation in Brazil, Newton says.

Specifically, Newton is studying the potential for the certification program of a nongovernmental organization (NGO), the Rainforest Alliance, to scale up and achieve greater sustainability in the cattle sector in Brazil.

Certification requires Brazilian farmers to achieve certain standards, such as protecting forests along waterways, using a certified slaughterhouse, and agreeing not to illegally clear forest. Cost is a primary barrier to certification.

Newton notes that only three cattle ranchers in Brazil have received certification from the Rainforest Alliance, out of hundreds of thousands of cattle ranchers.

“It’s a tiny number, but it’s a critical first step as a proof of concept, to show that it is possible,” Newton says.

Although 80 percent of the beef produced in Brazil is consumed in Brazil, where there is relatively low demand for food that is labeled as “sustainably sourced” — 20 percent is exported to countries such as the United States and the European Union, where there is higher demand, Newton says.

“What a consumer does in the United States can very genuinely affect what happens on the ground in Brazil via the chain of supply and demand and making choices about more-or-less sustainably produced commodities,” Newton explains.

“There are very innovative opportunities for influencing the sustainability of food systems, by consumers, by NGOs, by governments. And, while the scale of challenges is pretty daunting, there are also some really positive examples of change,” Newton says.

Newton notes that Brazil has reduced its deforestation rate significantly since about 2004, yet the country has also increased agricultural output of some of the main commodities.

“It’s a potential example of win-win,” Newton says. However, such trends can be fickle, as government priorities change, he adds.

After completing his first semester of teaching in the ENVS Program at CU-Boulder, Newton plans toreturn to Brazil, to study the impact of Rainforest Alliance certification on greenhouse gas emissions and on ranchers’ livelihoods.

He also will travel to Mozambique, to begin a new project looking at integrated agricultural systems, for example, where a farmer practices both cattle ranching and agroforestry on the same plot of land, and the role of these integrated systems in the livelihoods of smallholder farmers.

When Newton returns to CU-Boulder in the fall, he’ll be instructing the course, “Food and the Environment,” an undergraduate ENVS cornerstone course that will provide a global overview on sustainable food systems.

For the course, Newton plans to teach students about the synergies and tradeoffs between different food production models, for instance, organic, local, GMO, and big mechanized agriculture, as well as the environmental issues associated with each.

From a global perspective, Newton describes a primary challenge: the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation predicts that by 2050, the world will need to produce 70 percent more food than is currently produced due to global population growth, as well the trend of people consuming more food on average in some countries. At the same time, the world will need to address the environmental challenges that arise in tandem.

“So, maybe different models work in different places, and we’ll explore that in the course,” Newton says.

Marisa McNatt is a PhD student in the Environmental Studies Program studying barriers to and progress toward offshore wind development in the U.S.  Marisa has served as the ENVS newsletter editor and author for the Fall 2014 and Spring 2015 semesters. This story originally appeared in ENVS E-News.

April 10, 2015