Animals and Sustainability

Content

The course will address the following subjects and issues relating to the use of animals in a sustainability context at the enterprise and farm level

Introduction – sustainability and decision making

-The three aspects of sustainability (environmental, social, economic).

-The importance of studying how the three aspects of sustainability are related and impact each other.

-Decision case studies and the importance of stakeholder roles.

-Decision making in complex situations, when different aspects of sustainability should be considered.

Environmental sustainability

-Animal husbandry and interactions with the environment and impacts on the atmospheric, aquatic and terrestrial environment

-Technological opportunities for minimizing negative environmental impacts of animal activities

-Natural resource and nutrient flows perspectives of international trade with fodder, animal derived food, live animals and other products related to the animal sector

-Methods for assessing environmental impacts and sustainability of different animal production systems or uses, with a main focus on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).

Social sustainability

-Understanding stakeholder involvement and different views of sustainability

-Method to map stakeholders according to their power and interests in sustainability (PI grid)

- Distinguishing between generic sustainability dimensions (e.g. human wellbeing) and contextual dimensions of sustainability (e.g. food quality, animal welfare)

-Operationalization of social sustainability through choice of indicators (quantitative and qualitative) 

Economic sustainability

- The economic understanding of sustainability

- The concepts of weak and strong sustainability.

- Operationalization of social sustainability through choice of indicators (e.g. costs per kg output)

- Economic optimization, externalities and farm animal welfare

- Determining measures to increase sustainability (regulatory and market- based)

- Economic methods to assess sustainability (marginal trade-off, profit maximization, non-market valuation, cost-benefit, multicriteria decision analysis) 

Classroom teaching, group work, and guest lectures will take place in the first 7 weeks of the course. The students will complete and submit group reports in the 8th week and take exams in the 9th week.