On May 15, the Vatican convened a three-day summit, “From Climate Crisis to Climate Resilience,” for researchers, policymakers and faith leaders aimed at producing a Planetary Protocol for Climate Change Resilience. Inspired by the Montreal Protocol that targets substances that deplete the Earth’s ozone layer, and developed through a Vatican-based initiative on Climate Resilience in 2022, the new protocol provides guidelines for putting all nations on a path toward climate resilience.
To that end, the protocol envisions a three-part strategy: “first, mitigation efforts to diminish climate risks; second, adaptation strategies to cope with inevitable risks; and third, societal transformation that fosters ongoing mitigation and adaptation measures.” While the primary focus of the summit is on climate change, its aspirational goal is to present solutions that simultaneously address climate, biodiversity loss, and inequality.
Interdisciplinary research sessions explored four themes—water, air, food and energy—with an emphasis on at-risk, resource-limited populations. On the first day of the summit, in the session on water, MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change Research Scientist Kenneth Strzepek delivered a presentation entitled “Climate Change and Drought: The Impact on the Invisible 60% of Africa’s Population.”
Strzepek warned that agricultural droughts will worsen under climate change if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, posing a significant threat to smallholder (under- four-acre) farmers in Africa, who produce about 80 percent of the continent’s food supply.
“These subsistence farmers are poor and lack access to resources for climate adaptation, and are the most vulnerable to drought,” he said, stressing the need for climate forecasting, strategic planning, institutions, infrastructure and financing to rectify the situation. “We need to invest in supporting small-scale rainfed farmers, who constitute about 60 percent of Africa’s population, so they will be prepared for current and future droughts.”
Concerned that these 60 percent are generally invisible to international providers of economic development and resources, and mindful of the summit’s venue, Strzepek framed the situation in biblical terms in his concluding call to action:
“We need to reach out and support our poor brothers and sisters as God commands us:
- ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’ (Deuteronomy 15:11)
- ‘For the needy shall not always be forgotten, and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever.’ (Psalm 9:18)’”
Strzepek and all other summit participants served as signatories to the Climate Resilience Protocol. Once finalized, it will be submitted to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for consideration by all nations.
Strzepek’s participation in the summit was funded by the MIT Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS), where he serves as Climate, Water and Food Specialist. His presentation drew from a J-WAFS seed grant project on climate change and African agriculture, and a J-WAFS-sponsored Food and Climate Transition Alliance (FACT) project on climate change and food trade with the International Food Policy Research Institute and University of Oxford.
Photo: MIT Joint Program Research Scientist Kenneth Strzepek with Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey and Social Finance CEO Tracy Palandjian (Photo courtesy of Kenneth Strzepek)