US Cities and States reactions to the Paris Agreement Departure: Areas of Success and Improvement

The statement “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” sounds logical coming from a US president, but in reality, Pittsburgh is one of a growing number of US cities committed to following the Paris Agreement. With those words in June 2017, President Trump announced his intention to remove the US, from […]

Adaptations to Empower Nepali Farmers

If you want to see climate change from the front lines, step into the shoes of a farmer from the mountains of Nepal. If my earlier blogs about climate change’s effect on smallholders and ways they can adapt left you feeling that the problem is all but solved, remember that there are still hundreds of […]

Planting Square Crops in a Round Hole: How Farmers can Adopt Crop Varieties to “Fit” their New Climate

After years of failing to produce enough maize to feed his family, lifelong farmer John Oboum had completely given up growing crops on his one-hectare plot of land in Kenya’s Nyando Basin. Droughts were becoming more frequent and his situation was dire. Recalling that time, he says “We would go to bed hungry most days […]

The Treehugger Advantage: How Agroforestry can Help Mitigate and Adapt to Climate Change

One morning in January 2013, Salim Khan, a smallholder living the Bundelkhand region of Central India woke up to see his entire field covered in frost. The frost was a disaster for most farmers in his region, where Mr. Khan says he has never seen frost before. However, he had planted guava and gooseberry trees […]

Soil Carbon Sequestering: a Win-Win for Farmers and the Future

One element of the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture, which the UN has deemed essential to agricultural success, is soil carbon, soil health, and soil fertility. Unlike other issues which affect smallholders, action is being taken to restore the estimated 23% of soil under human use which is degraded, meaning it doesn’t contain enough carbon, […]

Moving on From Marie: How COPs can Help Farmers Succeed

One group, which has potential to make significant improvements and mobilize funds on behalf of smallholders, is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). 197 countries are “parties” to the convention, which host the COP meetings as well as other meetings and workshops year-round with the goal of minimizing human interference on the […]

Planetary Boundaries, a talk by Lance Gunderson

What Marie Antoinette can Teach Us about Awareness and Agriculture in the Age of Climate Change

Marie Antoinette is a historical figure made infamous by her oblivious response to the fact that the peasants of France had no bread to eat. With the words, “Let them eat cake,” she failed to solve the problem because of her aloof detachment from the pressing issues facing France’s citizens, and sealed her fate as […]