1st September | 12:30 - 14:00
This seminar will be given by Michele Moretti, working at the Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment of the University of Pisa (Italy).
Transforming agri-food systems in response to climate change and broader global challenges requires a paradigmatic shift beyond incremental technological and management solutions.
Operating at the interface of normal and post-normal science, my research interests critically address the limitations of prevailing mitigation and adaptation strategies, which tend to overlook systemic interdependencies, unintended trade-offs, and maladaptation under evolving climate and socio-economic conditions.
Transdisciplinary approaches, by engaging farmers, local actors, policymakers, and domain experts in participatory processes, advance the co-design of context-specific adaptation and mitigation strategies, enhancing the relevance, legitimacy, and resilience of transformation pathways.
Two Horizon projects guide these activities. PATHWAYS develops a socio-economic sustainability framework, using a two-round Delphi study and best-worst scaling to assess transition potential, validated on 4–6 value chains.
Re-Livestock combines explorative and normative approaches with Green Deal targets, it applies backcasting to map feasible transition pathways, showing how inclusive, knowledge-driven strategies can shape EU livestock policy and transformative change.
Michele Moretti is a Post-Doc fellow researcher at the University of Pisa with about 5 years of experience in international and multidisciplinary projects. He holds a PhD in ‘Agri-Food Economics’ obtained from the University of Bari. In his PhD work, he focused on the analysis of agricultural sustainability by developing an operational framework for the integration of biophysical and monetary sustainability assessment methods.
Prior to joining the PAGE group, he has worked at Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech (University of Liege) in the project ‘Low-Cost Water Desalination and Sensor Technology Compat Module’. Since 2019, he has carried out evidence-based research at the Department of Business Engineering and the Department of Bioscience Engineering at the University of Antwerp.
He has been involved in several EU-funded projects on the sustainable production of food and biomass, agricultural climate science economics, sustainable technologies, and circular economy. His research work is regularly published in scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, academic reports, and conference papers.
In 2020, he joined the Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment at the University of Pisa to work on the H2020 project MOVING focused on vulnerability to global threats and potential opportunities for farming and forestry systems in Europe’s mountain regions.