Hanna Lighthall, one of two undergraduate students from Cornell working on the AGILE for Climate project, presented a poster about the research at the annual College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Engaged and Experiential Learning event at Cornell. Her poster described the systematic literature review that she carried out on climate tools and services while working as a student intern this past summer. The literature review aims to identify what has been done so far on climate services for smallholder farmers, including whether gender inequities have been taken into account. Hanna and Lola, another undergraduate student working with the project, have reviewed over 150 papers as part of this study, and done some preliminary quantitative analysis of the findings.
Dr. Bezner Kerr will be Lead Author in upcoming IPCC assessment report.
Rachel has been selected to serve as a lead author in the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. She will contribute to Chapter 17, “Agriculture, food, forestry, fibre and fisheries”, in Working Group II, which considers the impacts, vulnerability and adaptation strategies to climate change. Dr. Bezner Kerr served as Coordinating Lead Author for the previous report, and is honored to be able to provide this public service to this global scientific report that serves as an important interface between scientists, policy makers and the general public.
Paper wins prestigious prize
A recent paper published Science about the environmental and social benefits of agricultural diversification, which Dr. Bezner Kerr and Sidney Madsen both contributed to, and that included several lab data sets from Malawi, has been awarded the Frontiers Planet Prize. This prestigious award recognizes impactful scientific research that addresses critical planetary boundaries, including biodiversity and climate change. The paper demonstrates, using 24 different empirical case studies, the benefits to people and the planet that diversified farming practices can provide.
IPCC Sixth Assessment Report in the News
Rachel Bezner Kerr served as a coordinating lead author of Chapter 5: Food, Fibre and Other Ecosystem Products of the IPCC WGII Sixth Assessment Report Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, alongside Toshihiro Hasegawa and Rodel Lasco. Since the release of the report in March, Dr. Bezner Kerr has been featured in many articles on the reports findings, in publications including The New York Times, Civil Eats, Al Jezeera, National Geographic, The Washington Post, and HuffPost.
Malawi Participatory Forest Inventory Project Recieves Atkinson Center Grant
The Malawi Participatory Forest Inventory Project was one of 11 projects awarded an Academic Venture Fund grant by the Cornell Atkinson Center in 2021. The project, which began in the fall of 2020, aims to support climate-resilient farming practices in Malawi while expanding knowledge about the quality and quantity of forests in northern Malawi and the relationship between agroecological farming practices and forest biodiversity. Daniel Kpienbarreh, a postdoctoral associate at Western University, and Linda Chimowa, the new research coordinator for SFHC, are both working on the project with Rachel Bezner Kerr.