Workshop 4
2 -4.30 pm - Design Thinking for Low Carbon Agriculture
Facilitator: Anne Schiffer, Leeds Beckett University
Applying Design Thinking for Low-Carbon Agri-food
Tackling climate change requires a better understanding of the opportunities we have to reduce emissions from food and farming while ensuring global food security. Agriculture is the source of roughly 10-12% of total annual GHG emissions and the cause of 75% of deforestation globally, with most of these emissions coming from developing countries. Yet agricultural yields must increase if we are to feed the projected 9 billion people on our planet in 2050. As such, the sector (and rural land in general) is increasingly being seen as an essential means to reach net-zero, whether through the production of biomass to replace fossil products, or freeing up land to build carbon sinks.
What is the aim of the workshop?
This participatory workshop introduces you to design thinking as creative process for innovation and problem solving. Firstly, it will provide you with an overview of design thinking theory. Following this, the workshop will guide you through a number of practical exercises allowing you to apply design thinking to support the development of low-carbon agri-food solutions.
What do I need to prepare?
Please ensure that you have some paper and pens available to work through the exercises.
Workshop plan:
• Introduction to design thinking (presentation) – 20 min
• Developing personas and defining a problem (exercise + feedback) – 40 min
Break – 10 min
• Potential solutions and prototyping (exercise) – 40 min
• Discussion focused on next steps – 20 min
About the Facilitator
Anne Schiffer, Leeds Beckett University
Dr Anne Schiffer explores how design thinking can help tackle local and global real world challenges, including in the areas of sustainable energy transitions, energy and water access. She is the author of Reframing Energy Access: Insights from The Gambia.
The interdisciplinary nature of her research brings together participatory/ co-design practice, urbanism, feminist development theory and design anthropology. She holds a PhD from Queen’s University Belfast that critiques the role of designers in international development
Prior to joining Leeds Beckett University, Dr Schiffer led the Scottish part of Community Power, a European funded project that aimed to improve policy and legislation to speed up the development of community-owned renewable energy.
She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) and until recently served as Senior Independent Director on the board of Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland.