Research context: FUSION and FORESIGHT

The modelling environment around my PhD, who supports it, and why that context matters when I write about Irish agriculture and climate policy.

FORESIGHT project illustration showing a backcasting pathway from a future vision to present-day decisions — *FORESIGHT project illustration*, FUSION, University of Galway, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Much of what I write here about Irish agriculture and climate policy comes from inside a government-funded modelling programme, and readers should know that before they read the rest.

I am doing my PhD within FUSION, the FUture Sustainable economy Integrated mOdelling Network at the University of Galway. The group works across life-cycle assessment, integrated assessment, land-use modelling and environmental software. In practice a question about agriculture does not have to stay inside an agricultural model. It can lead into forestry, energy, emissions accounting or land allocation.

Much of my work also sits alongside FORESIGHT, a project funded by Ireland’s Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications under a services contract to provide agriculture and land-use modelling to the Climate Action Modelling Group. FUSION leads the project with the University of Limerick and FERS Ltd. So when I write about Irish climate, agriculture or land-use policy, I am writing as someone who works inside a programme connected to those subjects. The views are my own and do not represent the University of Galway, the Department, funders or collaborators.

One of the tools in this environment is GOBLIN, which links agriculture, forestry and other land uses within a national land-balance framework. My own questions mostly begin after a national pathway has been made internally coherent. A national result can say that livestock, forestry or another land use changes by a given amount, but that change eventually has to meet a geography and a population of farms that differ from one another. The same national adjustment looks quite different when it reaches dairy, beef or other systems in different parts of the country. A model can be consistent in aggregate and still leave open where the transition falls, who carries it, and whether the land implied by several objectives can fit in the same places.

The habit I value most in this group is treating models as things to question. Assumptions should be visible enough to change, alternatives easy enough to test, and every result should arrive with some sense of what the model cannot tell us. Written down, that sounds like common sense. It becomes much harder to practise once a model is large and technically impressive.

The site will range well beyond my PhD, into economics, technology, Ghana, Ireland, the United States, books and code. When a post touches Irish agriculture or climate policy, though, this is the background I want readers to keep in mind.

Elvis Kwame Ofori
Researcher and writer behind EKO Perspectives.