State of the Planet

News from the Columbia Climate School

food4

  • Food Web: Trade Networks May Be Key to Solving Hunger

    Food Web: Trade Networks May Be Key to Solving Hunger

    Columbia’s Center for Climate Systems Research is building a network analysis program that can pinpoint trouble spots in the global food trade system.

  • Upping Our Game: Crop Insurance Project Proves Wildly Successful

    Upping Our Game: Crop Insurance Project Proves Wildly Successful

    A weather index insurance tool is graduating from research project to commercial product.

  • Swapping Where Crops are Grown Could Feed an Extra 825 Million People

    Swapping Where Crops are Grown Could Feed an Extra 825 Million People

    It could also reduce water stress, according to a new study that includes 14 major food crops from around the world.

  • Hatchets, Ratchets & Pivots: Book Talk by Ruth DeFries

    Hatchets, Ratchets & Pivots: Book Talk by Ruth DeFries

    As Professor Ruth DeFries aptly stated in her opening remarks at yesterday’s book launch for “The Big Ratchet,” if you look at satellite pictures of the earth, you see the imprint of the human species everywhere. Humans have come to dominate the planet. But how did this come to be? This question, among others, is…

  • Discussing Climate, Cities and Food

    Discussing Climate, Cities and Food

    Last week, the Earth Institute and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society hosted a discussion on cities, food and climate. What were people saying? Find out in this Storify recap of reactions from across Twitter!

  • From Birmingham to Bamako: How Farmers Deal with Drought

    From Birmingham to Bamako: How Farmers Deal with Drought

    A look at the tools and technologies farmers in Mali use to enhance their decision making in the face of droughts and other climate risks.

  • Daniel Hillel, Originator of High-Efficiency Irrigation, to Receive World Food Prize

    Daniel Hillel, Originator of High-Efficiency Irrigation, to Receive World Food Prize

    Daniel Hillel, an adjunct senior scientist at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, has been awarded the World Food Prize for his work in conceiving and promoting water-saving methods that have increased crop production on arid lands in 30 countries.

  • Climates Services: Must Help Us Understand Risks

    Climates Services: Must Help Us Understand Risks

    The point is setting priorities right, and for an agency like the World Food Programme, our focus is of course vulnerable people in the most vulnerable countries, countries where climate change is a multiplier of hunger risk. –- WFP’s Carlo Scaramella, in the fifth in a series of video interviews.

  • Wasting Food = Wasting Water

    Wasting Food = Wasting Water

    The world is teetering on the edge of a food crisis due to the growing population, soaring food prices, and water scarcity, yet a shocking one third of the food produced around the world goes to waste.

  • Food Web: Trade Networks May Be Key to Solving Hunger

    Food Web: Trade Networks May Be Key to Solving Hunger

    Columbia’s Center for Climate Systems Research is building a network analysis program that can pinpoint trouble spots in the global food trade system.

  • Upping Our Game: Crop Insurance Project Proves Wildly Successful

    Upping Our Game: Crop Insurance Project Proves Wildly Successful

    A weather index insurance tool is graduating from research project to commercial product.

  • Swapping Where Crops are Grown Could Feed an Extra 825 Million People

    Swapping Where Crops are Grown Could Feed an Extra 825 Million People

    It could also reduce water stress, according to a new study that includes 14 major food crops from around the world.

  • Hatchets, Ratchets & Pivots: Book Talk by Ruth DeFries

    Hatchets, Ratchets & Pivots: Book Talk by Ruth DeFries

    As Professor Ruth DeFries aptly stated in her opening remarks at yesterday’s book launch for “The Big Ratchet,” if you look at satellite pictures of the earth, you see the imprint of the human species everywhere. Humans have come to dominate the planet. But how did this come to be? This question, among others, is…

  • Discussing Climate, Cities and Food

    Discussing Climate, Cities and Food

    Last week, the Earth Institute and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society hosted a discussion on cities, food and climate. What were people saying? Find out in this Storify recap of reactions from across Twitter!

  • From Birmingham to Bamako: How Farmers Deal with Drought

    From Birmingham to Bamako: How Farmers Deal with Drought

    A look at the tools and technologies farmers in Mali use to enhance their decision making in the face of droughts and other climate risks.

  • Daniel Hillel, Originator of High-Efficiency Irrigation, to Receive World Food Prize

    Daniel Hillel, Originator of High-Efficiency Irrigation, to Receive World Food Prize

    Daniel Hillel, an adjunct senior scientist at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, has been awarded the World Food Prize for his work in conceiving and promoting water-saving methods that have increased crop production on arid lands in 30 countries.

  • Climates Services: Must Help Us Understand Risks

    Climates Services: Must Help Us Understand Risks

    The point is setting priorities right, and for an agency like the World Food Programme, our focus is of course vulnerable people in the most vulnerable countries, countries where climate change is a multiplier of hunger risk. –- WFP’s Carlo Scaramella, in the fifth in a series of video interviews.

  • Wasting Food = Wasting Water

    Wasting Food = Wasting Water

    The world is teetering on the edge of a food crisis due to the growing population, soaring food prices, and water scarcity, yet a shocking one third of the food produced around the world goes to waste.