abstract
- Climate change has worldwide impacts; however, it has an uneven impact in Latin-American rural communities and threatens their survival. Educational approaches in Latin countries are presented to exemplify key strategies toward sustainable communities. Particularly, rural communities¿ economy depends on raw materials to effectively supply food chain production. The food industry urgently needs immediate actions to regenerate ecosystems where raw materials come from. To overcome this need, systems thinking education is proposed as a bridge where students develop and test solutions to lessen social vulnerabilities and environmental impacts from food production. This chapter shows a migration from typical educational practices to systems thinking applied to the pressing needs in rural communities. Arrangements to senior undergraduates¿ curricula allowed an innovative educational approach to manage climate crisis by enhancing adaptive capacity in rural communities of Southern Mexico. This educational approach was challenge-based learning and utilized systems thinking under a socio-ecological framework. Design thinking methodology was implemented to facilitate biotechnological innovations. Senior undergraduate students met stakeholders, producers, and farm communities and gained firsthand insights on agro-waste of coffee and milk production. Students were guided by an interdisciplinary team of professionals and professors and fabricated prototypes based on agro-waste to lessen the vulnerability of rural communities to climate change. Students¿ prototypes were evaluated based on ethics, viability, and social, economic, and environmental benefits. The overall project was focused on increasing adaptive capacity of rural communities and setting up means to commercialize agro-waste-based products.