News

This coming April 14th, 2021, Erik Reinert and Andrea Saltelli join the discussion on Uncomfortable Knowledge, offering insights on how the Cartesian and Ricardian dreams have contributed to the modern crisis in science and economics. They will address the following questions among others: Until around 1900 most US economists got their education...

In a new article published in Energy Strategy Reviews, MAGIC researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona propose a novel conceptual framework to assess the performance of energy systems with a strong focus on biofuels. The proposed framework integrates four key aspects of biofuel systems: (1) the social factors determining...

The economy is approaching near-term collapse, not peak oil. The result is quite different. UKH webinar, 23 February 2021, 16:00 – 17:30 (CET) // 10:00 – 11:30 (EST), Invited speaker: Gail Tverberg, Moderator: Mario Giampietro. Most people assume that the limit on fossil fuel production is determined by the size of oil reserves available in...

MAGIC proudly launches its Uncomfortable Knowledge Hub (UKH), a legacy of more than four years of interdisciplinary environmental and social research into the water-energy-food-environment (WEFE) nexus. A key experience of the MAGIC project was that many WEFE Nexus issues, in policy domains such as the common agricultural policy, energy...

In a new article published in the journal 'Ecological Economics', MAGIC researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona take a close look at the virtual labour hours embodied in the goods and services traded by the EU, USA and China. Human labor is a crucial yet often overlooked biophyscial limit to sustainable growth. While in...

A new article by MAGIC researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona takes a critical look at the narratives around biofuels production in the European Union. The authors seek to clarify the confusion created by the simultaneous use of non-equivalent policy discourses and address the inconsistency between long-term goals and...

A new article of researchers from the MAGIC consortium and the European Environment Agency published today in the journal 'Ecosystem Services' points at the dependence of EU food and environmental security on imports of agricultural commodities. In the EU, national-scope efforts to protect local ecosystem services are greatly helped by the current...

MAGIC Final Policy Event | 30 September 2020 | 16:00 – 17:30 CEST | online |  The issues of water, energy and food (WEF) security are deeply entangled into each other. The WEF Nexus needs to be understood and governed as a complex system in order to overcome silos in scientific and political institutions. MAGIC is coming to a close after...

The MAGIC consortium proudly released its book: The Nexus Times! This book is an attempt at providing glimpses of Nexus issues in an accessible form for a general audience. It consists of short and sometimes very short articles that originally were published in our on-line newsletter with the same title. A range of topics related to...

PNS5 special MAGIC session | 22 September 2020 | 15:00 – 16:30 CEST | online | Don't miss out on MAGIC's final scientific event: 'Post-Normal Science in Practice: Lessons Learned from the MAGIC project'. It takes the form of a (virtual) special session at the 2020 Post-Normal Science Symposium (PNS5). The session consists of a...