Professor Alessandro De Pinto
Livelihoods and Institutions Department
Natural Resources Institute, Faculty of Engineering & Science
Alessandro (Alex) De Pinto joined the University of Greenwich in July 2020 as Professor of Climate Change and Food Security at the Natural Resources Institute. He is an environmental and natural resource economist with more than 20 years of experience working in economically depressed areas. Dr. De Pinto has a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Consumer Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA with a specialization in agricultural policies and environmental and resource economics. He has conducted research in Latin America, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa with a focus on climate smart agriculture, risk management, resilience and low emissions development strategies. Prior to the University of Greenwich, Dr. De Pinto was as Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington D.C. and was Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Redlands in California. At IFPRI, he led the Institute’s work on climate change and was liaison between IFPRI and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security. He has published extensively on issues related to climate change, food security, land use change and natural resources management in leading journals and has a broad experience engaging with foreign governmental agencies, government officials and ministries in the Global South.
Emerging evidence suggests that the likelihood development interventions have long-lasting positive impacts increases when they jointly address multiple objectives such as those related to mitigation and adaptation to climate change, gender equity and improving nutrition. Interventions that do not follow a more holistic approach and focus only on one particular aspect of development risk to unintentionally miss trade-offs across well-being outcomes, exclude vulnerable groups, or even increase the marginalization and vulnerability of others. This is why Professor De Pinto currently conducts research at the intersection of climate change, gender and nutrition. Throughout his research career, he has also worked on providing support for the design of policies that promote sustainable use of natural resources and sustainable economic development. In order to make domestic environmental policies viable, the well-being and priorities of many local actors (notably, smallholder farmers and producer organizations) must be taken into account as well as the exogenous, macro-scale forces related to global markets and biophysical changes such as climate change. Dr. De Pinto has worked extensively on developing modelling techniques that connect local issues (using local data sets such as household surveys) with forces that act domestically as well as globally such as climate change and global markets.
International Fund for Agricultural Development (2018 – 2020) – “Climate and Social Studies Services.” The project aimed at developing a coherent framework and the tool to mainstream climate change, gender, youth and nutrition in IFAD’s operations.
United Nation Development Programme (2017 – 2019) – “Diagnostic Study on Resilience -Building in Ethiopia.” The objective of the project was to provide the Government of Ethiopia with new vision to address several dimensions of fragility such as public investments on resilience building and economic growth, land use and land carrying capacity, and water resource management.
International Union for the Conservation of Nature (2017 – 2018) – “Forest Landscape Restoration and Food Security.” The objective of this projects was to assess the global effects of a large-scale implementation of the Forest Landscape Restoration approach on several metrics of Food Security.
United State Agency for International Development (2012 – 2015) – “Low Emission Developments Strategies.” This project provided strategic support to several countries as they were preparing the Intended Nationally Determined Contribution documents adopted at the twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
- De Pinto A, Cenacchi N, Robertson R, Kwon H-Y, Thomas T, Koo J, Begeladze S and Kumar C (2020) The Role of Crop Production in the Forest Landscape Restoration Approach—Assessing the Potential Benefits of Meeting the Bonn Challenge. Front. Sustain. Food Syst. 4:61. doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2020.00061
- De Pinto A, Cenacchi N, Kwon H-Y, Koo J, Dunston S (2020) Climate smart agriculture and global food-crop production. PLoS ONE 15(4): e0231764. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231764
- Komarek, A., De Pinto, A., Smith, V. (2020). “A review of types of risks in agriculture: what we know and what we need to know.” Agricultural Ecosystems. doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2019.102738
- De Pinto, A. Smith, V., Roberson, R. (2019). The Role of Risk in the Context of Climate Change, Land Use Choices and Crop Production: Evidence from Zambia. Climate Research, 79: 39–53. doi.org/10.3354/cr01581
- Komarek, A. Thurlow, J. Koo, K., De Pinto, A. (2019). Economywide effects of climate-smart agriculture in Ethiopia. Agricultural Economics. doi.org/10.1111/agec.12523
- Koo, J. Thurlow, J, Eldidi, H., Ringler, C., De Pinto, A, eds. (2019). Building resilience to climate shocks in Ethiopia. International Food Policy Research Institute Food Policy Report, Washington D.C. doi.org/10.2499/9780896293595
- De Pinto, A., Loboguerrero, A.M., Castano, R., Londono, M., Ovalle, K. (2018). Informing climate policy through institutional collaboration: reflections on the preparation of Colombia’s nationally-determined contribution (NDC). Climate Policy 18: 612-626. doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2017.1321521
- De Pinto, A., and J. M. Ulimwengu (Eds). (2017). A Thriving Agricultural Sector in a Changing Climate: Meeting Malabo Declaration Goals through Climate-Smart Agriculture. ReSAKSS Annual Trends and
- Outlook Report 2016. International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington D.C. doi.org/10.2499/9780896292949
- Bryan, E., Theis, S., Choufani, J., De Pinto, A., Meinzen-Dick, R. and Ringler, C. (2017). Gender-Sensitive, Climate-Smart Agriculture for Improved Nutrition in Africa South of the Sahara. A Thriving Agricultural Sector in a Changing Climate: Meeting Malabo Declaration Goals through Climate-Smart Agriculture. ReSAKSS Annual Trends and Outlook Report 2016. International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington D.C. doi.org/10.2499/9780896292949_09
- De Pinto, A., Li, M., Haruna, A., Hyman, G., Londono, M., Creamer, B., Kwon, H., Brayan Valencia Garcia, J., Tapasco, J., David Martinez, J., (2016). Low Emission Development Strategies in Agriculture. An Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses (AFOLU) Perspective. World Development, 87: 180-203. doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2016.06.013
- Li, M., De Pinto, A., Ulimwengo, J., You, L., Robertson, R., (2015). Modeling Land-use Allocation with Mixed-level Data: An Econometric Analysis for the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Environment and Resource Economics 60:433–469. doi.org/10.1007/s10640-014-9775-y
- Neufeldt, H., Jahn, M., Campbell, B. M., Beddington, J.R., DeClerck, F., De Pinto, A., Gulledge, J., Hellin, J., Herrero, M., Jarvis, A., LeZaks, D., Meinke, H., Rosenstock, T., Scholes, M., Scholes, R., Vermeulen, S., Wollenberg, E., Zougmoré, R., (2013). Beyond climate-smart agriculture: toward safe operating spaces for global food systems. Agriculture & Food Security 2:12. doi.org/10.1186/2048-7010-2-12
- De Pinto, A., Robertson, R., (2013). Adoption of Climate Change Mitigation Practices by Risk-averse Farmers in the Ashanti Region, Ghana. Ecological Economics, Vol 86. doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2012.11.002
- De Pinto A., G.C. Nelson, (2009). Land Use Change with Spatially Explicit Data: A Dynamic Approach. Environmental and Resource Economics, vol. 43. doi.org/10.1007/s10640-008-9232-x