Our Summer School
The summer school was organized under the theme “Bio-economy and the food life cycle – A life cycle management toolbox for sustainable regional food and biomass” from 21 September to 8 October 2020. Due to the global Covid-19 pandemic, LCSS 2020 took place as a virtual summer school!
The Summer School was an opportunity for professionals and regional managers to learn how to extend evolving life cycle management tools into new application areas in sustainable development – in this instance in the context of developing a deeper understanding of the bio-economy and food life cycle related issues. The objective was to encourage use of promising LCM tools by stakeholders who have not so far employed these techniques extensively. This includes regional institutions, research teams and industrial associations that wish to enhance the effectiveness of their sustainability initiatives. LCSS 2020 was also aimed at life cycle professionals and academics interested in broadening their client base by offering new applications.
This Summer School – the 9th in the current series – addressed the growing interest in the sustainability issues associated with food consumption and production as a means of promoting regional sustainable development. In particular, it examined the influential role of life cycle methodologies in ensuring the sustainability of bio-economy initiatives and projects that seek to enhance the sustainability of the food sector. The summer school drew inspiration from the book “Life cycle approaches to sustainable regional development (Routledge, 2017)”. A number of the summer school faculty are authors of important chapters in this publication.
The summer school used an interactive programme of lectures, workshops, cases studies and role-plays to explore key issues. The 2020 edition of the summer school explored various topics under the following four themes:
- Food and biomass in a sustainable world
- Bio-economy and sustainable development: life-cycle challenges
- The story of food – upstream and downstream look at the food cycle
- Towards a life cycle management toolbox for food and biomass: Synthesis
A report of the summer school is available here.
SPONSORS, PARTNERS and ASSOCIATES
This summer school, the ninth in the series, was organized by the FSLCI. The University of Salento initiated the Summer School series in 2011 and remains an important partner to its conduct also in other locations. Since 2015 the Summer School has been organized as part of FSLCI’s mission and vision to support advancing life cycle knowledge globally.
The Summer School was organized in collaboration with and right ahead of the 12th International Conference on Life Cycle Assessment of Food, the bi-annual conference that brings together more than 400 scholars and practitioners from 40+ countries working in academia, industry, and public institutions. More information is available at: https://lcafood2020.com
