AI-generated summary
The Future Trends Forum Tech to Table, organized by the Bankinter Innovation Foundation, convened leading experts to discuss how emerging technologies can address pressing challenges in food security, sustainability, and agricultural innovation. Gonzalo Delacámara, Director of the Center for Water and Climate Adaptation at IE University, emphasized the complexity of these issues, underscoring the need for a holistic approach that integrates climate adaptation and mitigation. He highlighted the paradoxes in sustainability efforts, such as competing economic incentives and the rebound effect, where efficiency gains paradoxically lead to increased resource use. Delacámara also noted geopolitical dynamics, contrasting Europe’s lag in technological leadership with China’s rapid advances, and stressed that financial resources are available but must be properly directed toward sustainable investments.
Delacámara warned that rising food demand, projected to increase by 70% by 2050 amid shrinking arable land and climate stress, threatens global food security. He pointed out that water scarcity and disrupted supply chains due to droughts exacerbate this risk. While technological solutions like desalination exist, their adoption is hindered by governance and economic incentive structures favoring unsustainable practices. Ultimately, Delacámara called for systemic reform: redesigning economic incentives and governance to prioritize sustainability, enabling technological advances to effectively foster a resilient and sustainable food system for the future.
Exploring the Impact of Technology and Governance on Future Food Security with Gonzalo Delacámara
The think tank Future Trends Forum Tech to Table: technologies in agriculture that will define the future of food, organised by the Bankinter Innovation Foundation, has brought together the main experts and thought leaders in the fields of agriculture and food.
With the primary objective of addressing current and emerging challenges related to food security, sustainability and agricultural and food innovation, the event has highlighted the crucial importance of new technologies and innovative approaches in the transformation of these vital sectors. Participants exchanged ideas and knowledge on how the latest trends and technological advances can revolutionise the way we grow, produce and distribute food, thus ensuring a more sustainable and resilient future for humanity.
One of the participating experts was Gonzalo Delacámara, Director of the Center for Water and Climate Adaptation at IE University, who gave a revealing presentation entitled “Long-term economic paradoxes in food security and climate adaptation”. His speech highlighted the inherent complexity of the sustainability challenges we face, and illuminated possible ways forward to address these crucial issues.
If you want to see Gonzalo Delacámara’s presentation, you can do so in this video:
Gonzalo Delacámara: Economic paradoxes in long-term food security and climate adaptation
Delacámara, a natural resource economist with a fascination with biology, shares his unique perspective on the intersection between long-term food security and climate adaptation, highlighting the importance of taking a broad view in the face of global challenges. Working in more than 80 countries, his experience has allowed him to compare and contrast the responses of various nations to these interconnected crises, from water security to the climate emergency and the potential collapse of biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Momentum for sustainability: between advances and setbacks
A key aspect of his presentation is the analysis of contradictory trends in the drive towards sustainability. On the one hand, reports such as the one from the World Economic Forum suggest that sustainability is becoming the new digitalization, both for its benefits and for the obstacles it faces. On the other hand, there is significant resistance, especially in the United States, towards impact measurement and formal compliance with ESG (environmental, social, and governance) metrics.
In this context, Delacámara highlights the competition between giants such as the European Union and the United States in the race for sustainability. While the EU launches the “Next Generation EU” fiscal stimulus program, dedicating a third of investment to sustainability, the United States responds with the “Inflation Reduction Act“, seeking to catch up with the rest of the world in terms of sustainable investments. This competition could have the unintended effect of increasing or decreasing the marginal cost of adopting new technologies, an area that has yet to be explored in depth.
Challenges and Opportunities: Technology and Finance in the Age of Sustainability
Delacámara argues that, at present, financial constraints should not be an obstacle, given the excess liquidity in global financial markets. However, the real challenge lies in channeling that capital into the right investments. The availability of technology does not seem to be a limitation either; The problem lies in overcoming unsustainable patterns of consumption and production.
In his analysis, he highlights how indebtedness has become a structural characteristic of our economies, increasing the probability of default for both countries and companies. This phenomenon, combined with a reversal in the process of globalization, has direct implications for global trade in agricultural products, thus affecting food security.
Europe and China: contrasts in the technological and sustainable scenario
Examining the global technological and sustainable landscape, Delacámara points to the absence of European companies among the most valued on the internet, suggesting that Europe risks becoming a “theme park” if it fails to lead in sustainability and civil rights. In contrast, China dominates in the import of raw materials and is making progress in key sectors such as semiconductors, reconfiguring the balance of technological and economic power globally.
Adaptation and mitigation: the path to a comprehensive response to climate change
On the other hand, Delacámara stresses the importance of focusing on both climate change mitigation and adaptation to its impacts. While mitigation focuses on the energy transition and change in modes of transport, adaptation requires an equally detailed and ambitious approach. The international community, he argues, must develop a roadmap for adaptation that complements mitigation efforts, recognizing that there are no paths to mitigation without adaptation pathways, as the latest IPCC report points out.
Its call to action highlights the need to address these issues with a holistic perspective, focused on both technological innovation and economic and financial restructuring, to ensure a sustainable future for all.
The expert critically addresses the root causes of unsustainable decisions affecting food security and natural resource management; The problem lies not in humanity’s lack of intelligence or inherent evil, but in the presence of strong economic incentives that promote ill-advised decisions.
The challenge of feeding the future
It highlights the monumental challenge projected by the FAO: to increase food production by 70% by 2050, in order to feed a world population estimated at almost 10,000 million people. This goal must be achieved amid growing arable land scarcity and the climate crisis. Delacámara emphasizes the worrying decline in per capita food production capacity, a trend that threatens to undermine global food security.
Pressure on natural resources
The presentation continues with an analysis of how food production exerts increasing pressure on water resources and soils. Citing a report by the World Resources Institute’s Aqueduct Project, he highlighted that, by 2040, 25% of the world’s population will face long-term water stress, a challenge that is not limited to specific regions, but is global, affecting from the Mississippi basin to southern European countries and large areas of China and India.
Supply chain and technology challenges
Delacámara also pointed out how recurrent droughts in different parts of the world are destabilizing global supply chains, critically affecting fertilizer trade and, therefore, food security. This situation highlights the vulnerability of our agricultural and logistics infrastructure to the climate crisis.
The Paradox of the Rebound Effect
One of the most provocative points of his presentation is the discussion of the “rebound effect“. This phenomenon occurs when efficiency gains in the use of resources, such as water, instead of conserving those resources, end up increasing their consumption due to scale effects, changes in the crop mix, or increases in production. This paradox underscores a central challenge: being more resource-efficient does not necessarily translate into greater sustainability at the global level.
Technological innovation vs. governance and incentive design
Finally, Delacámara explores technological solutions to these challenges, such as the desalination of brackish water for agricultural use, a promising strategy to increase the supply of fresh water. However, he stresses that the adoption of these technologies is not spontaneous.
Conclusion: towards sustainable governance
Gonzalo Delacámara’s speech at the Future Trends Forum highlights the complexity of achieving sustainability in food production and natural resource management. Despite technological advances, without a change in governance and in the system of economic incentives, these advances will not reach their full potential in promoting sustainable consumption and production patterns. His final message is clear:
“To successfully navigate towards a sustainable future, we must redesign the incentives that guide our economic decisions, putting sustainability at the heart of the global strategy.”
Director del Centro de Adaptación al Agua y al Clima en la Universidad IE
