Nairobi

Learning from the Past to Inform a Resilient and Sustainable Future

The collaboration produced a definitive concept that can be used as the basis for funding or grant applications for the Northern Kenyan region.

January 30, 2023
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Columbia Global Centers | Nairobi partnered with the Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel (BGU), Columbia University (CU), Stony Brook University (SU) and the Turkana Basin Institute (TBI) to host the Learning from the Past to Inform a Resilient and Sustainable Future: Human and Environmental Adaptation to Climate Change workshop from January 24th - 26th, 2023. The institutions came together to form the BGU-CGC-CU- SU-TBI Consortium to produce a definitive concept that can be used as the basis for funding or grant applications for the Northern-Kenyan region, which has been referred to as a 'hard to reach area' due to various geographical, economic, conflict, insecurity, and environmental factors that hinder progress. The Consortium also intended to create a substantiated, research-based decision-making platform that reflects on the archeological past and the present of Northern Kenya to guide future thinking by policymakers, donor agencies and communities. To accomplish this process, the BGU-CGC-CU- SU-TBI Consortium invited area specialists who further informed the exercise by giving rich presentations on: 

  • Links between climate, climate change, agroecology, food and human wellbeing 
  • Bridging science, archeology and health
  • Water scarcity in Africa
  • Soil microbiomes along a steep precipitation gradient
  • The Turkana Basin Institute: where are we now
  • Embracing a socio-environmental system approach for resilient and sustainable communities
  • Using open-source, affordable sensor networks for environmental monitoring
  • Applying data from the Turkana Genome Project: How to apply bio- and geno-archeology to the present and to the future
  • Climate Change and Extreme Heat: Impacts on Animal and Human Health and Adaptation Strategies
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At the end of the workshop, the experts determined that multiple proposals should be developed to expand the scope of funding and incorporate the different elements tied to the concept generated from the various presentations. The Consortium intends to continue holding multiple consultative stakeholder workshops to enrich the proposal development process.