For my second week of rotations in the Mbola Millennium Village, I was with the Community Development and Education Team. The way the project engages the local government and village structures, as well as what it does to bolster up the educational systems means everything in terms of sustainability and community acceptance of MVP initiatives.
Megatons of carbon dioxide, radiative forcing, technology deployment, cap-and-trade systems: this is the common vocabulary of climate change. Concepts of equality, justice and ethics are relative latecomers to this highly specialized and technical world. Where they have emerged, terms like ‘climate justice’ usually refer to the interests of developing nations as a whole, reflecting the deep…
I grew up in a family that drove on vacations, be it six hours to the beach, eight hours to see relatives, or three days to Idaho. So the seven hour drive from Calabria to Rome is no big deal, although the lack of air conditioning does make it undesirable. When I tell my friends…
Accra, Ghana, MCI’s newest Millennium City, presents a unique set of challenges in its quest to attain the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. With a population of well over three million, Accra has had to deal with public sector challenges typical of many urban areas in sub-Saharan Africa, including finding solutions to the many pressing…
We have finished our mission at Puncak Jaya and removed the ice cores, along with all camps and people from the field. Currently, we are in the coastal city of Timika for a few days, drying out our field equipment and tents. These are the first glaciers we have ever drilled where it rains almost every day–and…
In part 1 of this interview, I talked with Columbia Water Center hydroclimatologist Stefan Sobolowski about the effects of continental snowcover on climate, and the implications of his research on climate change. In part 2, we talk about the problem of uncertainty in climate prediction models, extreme weather events, the regional variation of climate change…
The community sector carries out training workshops addressing gender issues two to three times per year. As part of our community sector rotation last week, we visited the homes of two couples, one of which had attended the training, one of which had not. Based on the day’s discussions with the field facilitators and visited…
One of the challenges of studying the Calabrian subduction zone is the enormous variation over relatively short distances. Etna is located just 120 kilometers from Stromboli, yet the volcanoes have completely different sources of magma. Fluvial conglomerates in the Crotone Basin have lots of chert, yet conglomerates of the same age just 15 kilometers to…
After the memorable trip up Mount Etna, Nano went to the Southern Apennines, while my parents and I made the familiar trip (for me, anyway) across the Sila and into the Crotone Basin. I raved to my parents about the great beaches and wonderful swimming in the Ionian Sea; I reminisced about my time on…