Alex Godoy-Faúndez

Distributional impacts of climate change on basin communities: an integrated modeling approach

Agriculture is one of the most vulnerable economic sectors to the impacts of climate change, specifically those related with expected changes in water availability. By using a hydro-economic model, this study assesses the distributional impacts of climate change, considering the geographical location of each farmer’s community and the spatial allocation of water resources at basin scale. A hydrological model, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool model, describes the basin hydrology, while farmers’ economic responses are represented using a non-linear agricultural supply model. We simulated a reduction in both water endowment—by perturbing the hydrologic model with a regionalized climate change scenario—and agricultural yields, in order to assess the behavior of farmers’ communities. We also assessed the effectiveness of a water policy aimed at decreasing the vulnerability of farmers’ communities to climate change. At the aggregated level we found relatively small impacts, consistent with the existent literature. However, we found large distributive impacts among both farmer’s communities and agricultural activities. The water policy showed to be effective to reduce those impacts, but our results suggest the existence of unwanted effects on rainfed agriculture, as in some communities the level of income decreases when the policy is implemented.

Environmental-Microbial Biotechnology Inside Mining Operations from an Engineering Viewpoint Based on LCA

The relationship between the mining industry, society, and environment has been historically complex due to the number and scale of operational impacts. Today, the mining sector is at a tipping point to achieve equilibrium between high levels of production and minimizing environmental impacts. A feasible and novel approach to solve this need is the incorporation of concepts from industrial ecology to mining processes. Such approach could support an integrated management of materials available inside mine plants delivered by other industrial and depurative activities. Mining operations tend to be characterized as a conservative industry with few opportunities to innovate particularly with consideration to the application of microbial biotechnology at a large scale inside mineral processing plants, waste treatment, and ore recovery limited to bio-hydrometallurgical processing (e.g., Biolixiviation).