Exploring Sustainable Bioeconomies: An MIT Delegation’s Journey into the Peruvian Amazon
By: Marco Herndon, Program Associate and Marcela Ángel, Research Program Director
In January 2025, a delegation from MIT that included faculty, researchers, and students traveled to the Peruvian Amazon — one of the world’s most biodiverse ecosystems — to explore sustainable bioeconomies and conservation efforts. The weeklong journey was organized by the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI) in collaboration with Amanatari, a Peruvian nonprofit dedicated to fostering businesses that generate income for local communities based on the unique biodiversity of the Amazon while preserving the standing forest, such as stingless bees and aguaje oil and fibers. Last year, MIT, Amanatari, and the Peru’s University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) began a five-year collaboration to undertake research and pedagogical activities in service of the conservation of the Amazon and the sustainable development of Amazonian cities and local communities. The first year of collaboration has focused on understanding local environmental priorities, building strong cross-institutional relationships, and convening a broader MIT research community to create a collaborative research agenda.
The MIT, Amanatari, and UTEC delegation with family members of the Flores brothers and community members in Parinari. Photo credit: Amanatari
The Amazon has faced long-standing environmental and socioeconomic challenges, with research and innovation efforts in the region historically struggling to gain traction. As José Alvarez, Amanatari’s territorial management lead with over 30 years of experience in the region, cautioned, “The Amazon is the graveyard for all research projects.” To counteract these challenges, Amanatari is working to develop biobusinesses and secure economic incentives for conservation by removing bottlenecks and advancing enabling conditions, such as water access, sustainable energy, and land rights for local communities to manage forests sustainably.
MIT’s delegation — which included faculty and researchers with expertise in urban planning, international development, Indigenous-based planning, and environmental engineering — joined Amanatari on this trip for firsthand insights into the bioeconomy’s potential and its structural challenges. It included Professor Gabriella Carolini, Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Studies; Dr. Leonardo Capeleto, Postdoctoral Associate at the City Infrastructure Equity Lab; Kathleen Julca, a fourth-year student in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP); Stephen Hart, Research Associate at the LCAU; Larisa Ovalles, Research Associate at the UrbanRISK Lab; Marcela Ángel, Research Program Director at the MIT ESI; and Marco Herndon, Research Associate at the MIT ESI. Their insights were related to of identifying culturally pertinent business models, facilitating adaptable water and sanitation solutions, and ensuring a fair exchange of labor and commerce.
Urban Gateways to the Amazon Bioeconomy
The MIT delegation’s journey began in Lima, where they met with UTEC researchers at the newly formed Amazon Sustainability Research Institute, and Amanatari’s CEO, Bernardo Sambra. These discussions focused on how to strengthen sustainable value chains — such as the production of nature-based goods and services through biobusinesses — all while balancing the urgency of offsetting deforestation with the prioritization of Indigenous knowledge, given the Amazon’s long history of exploitation. The team also engaged with industry leaders already operating in the bioeconomy, including the AJE Group, a multinational beverage company producing drinks from Amazonian superfruits, and Mapunto, a fashion and textile company using Amazonian fibers such as chambira (Astrocaryum chambira) and punga (Pachira brevipes) in collaboration with Indigenous women weavers. These businesses offer numerous opportunities for research and innovation that can strengthen sustainable value chains, including monitoring the bioeconomy’s social and ecological impacts, and creating cooperation models that safeguard Indigenous communities, their governance, and self-organizing capacities.
Following a rich exchange of ideas in Lima, the group traveled to Iquitos, the largest city in the Peruvian Amazon, which is located in the department of Loreto. It is one of the most highly conserved areas of the Amazon Rainforest, home to the headwaters of important tributaries of the Amazon River and its most extensive peatland. Here, they met with Carmen Dávila, Director of the Research Institute of the Peruvian Amazon (IIAP), and officials from the National Service for Protected Areas (SERNANP), gaining valuable insights from the region’s broader ecosystem of researchers and policymakers investing in conservation and biodiversity management initiatives. These ranged from restoring aquatic ecosystems to recuperating riverbeds destroyed by illegal mining — all critical for ecosystem health and sustainable livelihoods.
Navigating the Amazon: Community-Led Conservation and Innovation Projects
The next phase of the trip brought the delegation deeper into the Amazon, traveling by boat along the Amazon River and its tributaries to visit three rural, Indigenous communities engaged in high-potential biobusinesses. These communities, with origins in diverse Indigenous cultures and each facing distinct threats, are central to Amanatari’s efforts to develop scalable, sustainable economic models that could be replicated across the Amazon.
Marco Herndon, a co-author of this article, found visiting these areas to be deeply valuable and enriching. He sees the bioeconomy as an emerging strategy for conservation and development in the Amazon, and in his experience, traveling on the ground was critical in learning how communities were engaged in creating their new livelihoods, the challenges they faced in doing so, and where research could support them. Since many of these communities were very remote and communicated through relationships and storytelling, in-person visits were indispensable in introducing himself and his team appropriately in the context.
The MIT delegation navigates the Río Napo, en route to Sucusari. Photo credit: Amanatari
Maijuna Stingless Beekeeping: A Model for Technology-Enhanced Learning
The Maijuna Indigenous peoples inhabit the Sucusari community near the Río Napo and have long fought for their territorial rights, securing a 391,093-hectare regional conservation area in 2015. Having faced numerous threats to their survival and now numbering just over 500 people, today they are engaged in stingless beekeeping (Melipona Eburnea) — among other bioeconomic activities — and recuperating ancestral ecological knowledge to produce sustainably harvested honey with the support of One Planet, a non-profit led by ethnobiologist Michael Gilmore. Through a participatory knowledge-sharing initiative named the Bee Schools (in Spanish, escuelas de abeja), the Maijuna have developed methods to collect wild forest beehives and recreate their conditions for honey production without cutting down trees. They currently sell the honey produced by these bees at a small-scale to local tourists and buyers in Peru.
As a biobusiness model replicable at the family-scale, research partnerships with MIT to assess and certify the honey’s unique chemical properties could contribute to expanding its value chains and potential as a significant alternative source of income for local communities. MIT researchers also identified collaboration potential to build upon the success of the Bee School and establish Biodiversity Monitoring Academies as nodes for biodiversity data collection, knowledge sharing, and capacity building. These would contribute to building more transparent data and institutions while reducing entry barriers for Indigenous and local communities’ participation in bioeconomic activities.
Aguaje Oil Production in Parinari: Overcoming Water and Sanitation Bottlenecks
In Parinari, an Indigenous community located within the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve, the Flores brothers have led a community-driven enterprise since 1997, producing oil from aguaje (Mauritia flexuosa) — one of the Amazon’s most abundant palms — using sustainable methods. Instead of cutting down aguaje trees, the Flores brothers invented and use a maquisapa, a harness that allows harvesters to safely climb the 20-40 meter trees and pick the fruits. Their production plant is located in the Parinari village and is powered by solar and natural gas for a hot aguaje oil extraction process, providing income to local women and aguaje harvesters. Their company extracts aguaje fruit from a parcel in an aguaje marshland collectively owned by the community.
Despite significant innovation achievements, challenges remain — transitioning to cold-pressed extraction processes required by international buyers, securing access to clean water and renewable energy, improving sanitation, and implementing systematic quality controls for sustainably sourced fruit. Amanatari, in collaboration with faculty and researchers from MIT’s DUSP, seek to leverage research-based innovation and integrated water management planning processes at the regional level to facilitate the implementation of ecosystem-based adaptation interventions for riverfront communities, such as Parinari. These interventions could include investments in conservation, restoration, agroforestry, and low-tech water and sanitation solutions that support the provision of water-based ecosystem services for current and future use. All of these are critical in supporting biobusinesses and guaranteeing water security for riverfront communities under diversified climate risks.
The MIT delegation hears from Einstein Flores, co-owner of the Flores brother’s aguaje processing business in Parinari. Photo credit: Amanatari
Superfibers in 20 de Enero Community: Learning from Women-Led Biobusinesses
The delegation further enriched their knowledge of superfibers in the 20 de Enero community, also located in Pacaya-Samiria. After a guided tour to view the aguaje, chambira, and punga trees in the surrounding forests, the group met with local weavers — primarily Indigenous women — who had diversified their methods to create superfibers through workshops organized by Amanatari in partnership with Mapunto and local organizations. Many of the women produce crafts from chambira palm fibers, and the workshops have built upon this knowledge base, introducing new skills to produce finer quality and higher value fibers. MIT and Amanatari are well aware that bioeconomic development projects must respond to gender-based relationships with respect to land tenure, labor, and traditional customs — particularly around water use and collection — and any interventions must support the social systems that safeguard Indigenous women.
Looking Aahead: Leveraging the Bioeconomy and Sustainable Urban Development in the Amazon
Throughout the trip, the MIT delegation experienced both the unique biodiversity of the Peruvian Amazon and witnessed the systemic barriers to “green” sustainable development. While initiatives like stingless beekeeping, aguaje oil production, and superfibers offer promising local economic development models, they require complex technical and logistical governance, as well as regulatory support to scale successfully. Most importantly, the bioeconomy’s large-scale potential to counterbalance deforestation and extractive industries like illegal economies, and to catalyze a transition towards planned and sustainable urban development models in Amazonian corridors, remains an understudied critical area for research. Urban and peri-urban spaces around Iquitos — as well as rural communities like Sucusari, Parinari, and 20 de Enero — face a series of collective stressors common across the Amazon watershed: the lack of universal treatment for household and industrial water sanitation systems, poor solid waste management, high rates of poverty, childhood malnourishment, accelerated rural-to-urban migrations, and more. All of these factors are interconnected with biodiversity loss and climate change, exacerbating environmental and public health vulnerabilities. The bioeconomy inherently relies on environmental health, and so its growth and impact must be assessed not just in terms of sheer profits, but through an equity-driven evaluation framework that considers wider societal needs intertwined with the ecosystem’s ecological transformations and conservation challenges.
MIT, in collaboration with Amanatari, UTEC, and the broader ecosystem of stakeholders engaged in urban planning and bioeconomic development in the Amazon — including SINCHI in Colombia, IIAP in Peru, and the Mamirauá Institute in Brazil — is committed to advancing research that positions the bioeconomy and planned, sustainable urban “green” development as a viable, alternative economic development model. This effort has the strong potential to ensure the protection of the Amazon watershed while supporting the local communities who have historically been its stewards and rely on its natural resources for their livelihoods.
As Marcela Ángel, a co-author of this article, reflected on the trip, she found that it expanded the MIT’s team understanding of local priorities, created great momentum, and underscored the importance of collaborative, interdisciplinary approaches in tackling environmental, urban, and socioeconomic challenges intertwined in the Amazon. MIT’s continued engagement through Amanatari and UTEC represents an opportunity to contribute action-oriented research and technological innovations to support sustainable development in one of the world’s most vital ecosystems.
MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI) Hosts Global Conference on Mine Waste
Mining operations are estimated to produce 14.4 billion tonnes of tailings, or waste from mineral ore processing, per year, according to the Global Tailings Review. That is equal to the weight of 43,000 Empire State Buildings.
At a low estimate, there are nearly 8,500 facilities worldwide that store this waste, usually in the form of slurries pumped into earth embankment dams. These facilities pose enormous environmental and social risks associated with potential structural instability or leakage. For example, two tailings dams collapsed in Brazil over the last decade, killing nearly 300 people and contaminating soil and waterways. As the world demands more metals and minerals for everything from electronic devices to the clean energy technologies used to power them, the amount of tailings produced each year will increase.
This semester, the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI) and faculty from the MIT School of Engineering, in collaboration with ICMM, convened the MIT Global Summit on Mine Tailings Innovation to consider technical advances that may help mitigate tailings hazards.
Held over two days in late September, the hybrid event was oriented primarily toward exchanging ideas among and between engineers and tailings experts from the mining industry and universities. Speakers included eight MIT faculty and staff and 34 other representatives of diverse companies and organizations from around the world. More than 145 participants attended the event in person in Cambridge, Mass., while 100 tuned in virtually. Participants joined from 12 countries on six continents.
“This conference represents a unique opportunity for researchers at MIT and beyond to understand key knowledge gaps that the mining industry faces, and share our innovative capacity to address them,” said Prof. Elsa Olivetti, Director of the MIT Climate Project’s Mission on Decarbonizing Energy and Industry.
Bryony Clear Hill, Director of Innovation at ICMM, echoed this sentiment.
“A just and sustainable transition to a low carbon world requires collaboration and innovation,” she said. “The partnership between MIT and ICMM at the MIT Global Summit on Mine Tailings Innovation exemplifies the transformative power of collaboration in tackling one of the mining industry’s most pressing challenges: reducing tailings waste and reimagining its role in a sustainable future. The conference provided a unique platform to gather a diverse range of stakeholders – including practitioners, academics, and startups – to discuss both the need and opportunities to reduce, reuse, and reimagine tailings.”
The last three items were the key cross-cutting themes that emerged from the presentations and panel discussions.
Participants first explored opportunities to reduce the amount of tailings produced and the space taken up by their storage. For example, Luke Vollert, of Newmont Corporation, emphasized that being more precise at the mineral extraction phase through coarse particle flotation reduces the amount of unwanted material that eventually contributes to tailings. Other ways to reduce tailings volumes include smart shovels that reject low-grade ore and conveyor belts that then separate that ore further toward different processing streams.
Several presenters indicated optimism for filter stacked tailings. This process removes most of the water from the tailings so that they do not need to be held in liquid form behind a dam. Kaci Jenkins, of Rio Tinto, noted that this reduces the amount of water used and the storage area of tailings. Phil Newman, from Anglo American, also noted that this storage method reduces the risk of dangerous failure of the facility. A key challenge to this process is that it is more expensive to produce dry tailings than wet tailings, so wide-scale adoption would require innovations and/or government regulation.
A second key theme addressed by presenters was the potential to reuse tailings. Though presenters expressed some optimism that old tailings could be re-mined for ores that were passed over previously due to low grades or outdated technology, this practice is unlikely to reduce overall tailings production. However, several presenters noted that tailings themselves can be put to useful purposes. For example, Priscilla Nelson, of the Colorado School of Mines, noted that tailings can be used to meet some demand for sand, cement, ceramics, and even glass. Daniel Franks, from the University of Queensland, showed that producing ore sand, which can be upcycled into aggregates and other building materials for local uses, can replace demand for sand by more than 20 percent in Mexico, the Philippines, China, Peru, Ghana, and South Africa, and as much as 60 percent in Chile, while reducing equivalent volumes of tailings that would have to be stored indefinitely.
Third, presenters throughout the conference looked for opportunities to reimagine tailings production and management. For example, Linda Figueroa, from the Colorado School of Mines, emphasized the important role of universities in researching tailings challenges and training the next generation of practitioners who will directly work on them in the industry. Other participants showed the potential for new methods to change the mineral extraction process. For example, MIT Prof. Antoine Allanore presented on the potential to use sulfur to more sustainably recover metal from ore deposits, while Prof. Yassine Taha, from the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, envisioned the potential for mining and construction industries to work together to more efficiently meet material demands of the latter by using the waste of the former.
Across these three themes, key gaps remain. For example, MIT Prof. Andrew Whittle noted that insufficient resources are invested in mine closure. This can result in tailings impoundments that pose threats to local populations and environments, and financial liabilities for companies. These observations indicate the need for companies to plan for the long-term management of their tailings from the outset of mining projects, which may in turn lead them to invest further in innovations to reduce tailings production.
Another key gap is the role of community engagement in the design and management of tailings. Members of local communities often work at mining operations, but are also the most vulnerable to the environmental hazards of tailings. Yet more work is needed to understand and respond to community concerns around tailings. Industry and university researchers thus have an opportunity to train and involve communities more in decision-making about tailings design and management, and to participate in tailings monitoring.
“This conference continues ESI’s commitment to addressing the inevitable expansion of mining for the minerals and metals needed for decarbonizing the world’s energy systems while considering the very real risk of social and environmental damage posed by that expansion,” said MIT ESI Director Prof. John E. Fernández. “The current state of mine tailings is representative of an attitude that we need to move beyond. We cannot be satisfied with the creation of dangerous and toxic landscapes because we did not deploy our creativity and ingenuity to think ahead of the problem we were creating. I am personally thrilled to know there are many people at universities and in the private sector committed to moving beyond business as usual in mining. Now let’s move forward with real improvements on the issue of the waste resulting from mining.”
Want more from the MIT Global Summit on Mine Tailings Innovation? View the full list of speakers and event agenda or check out select presentation videos and slides.
The header image is courtesy of Rory Fisher.
The MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative’s (ESI’s) Primer of COP16
By: Marcela Ángel, Research Program Director, MIT ESI; Silvia Duque, MIT Master in City Planning student; and Hannah Leung, MIT Master in City Planning and Master of Science in Real Estate student
This year’s 16th global Conference of the Parties (COP16) for the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was held in Cali, Colombia from Oct. 21 to Nov. 1. It was a gathering of governments, NGOs, businesses, academic institutions, and practitioners focused on stopping global biodiversity loss and advancing the 23 goals of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) — an international agreement adopted in 2022 to guide global efforts to protect and restore biodiversity through 2030.
Under Colombia’s ambitious vision of creating peace with nature — and with the participation of a record number of 23,000 delegates, five heads of state, and more than 150 ministers and vice ministers — COP16 achieved important milestones of the KMGBF and more broadly helped raise public awareness on biodiversity challenges and potential solutions.
The conference, based on COP tradition, was held in two designated venues: the Green and Blue Zones. The Blue Zone is the space for formal negotiations and closed conversations intended for registered delegates, while the Green Zone is open to the public and focused on showcasing relevant initiatives across businesses and raising public awareness. COP16’s Green Zone was also the first to be held in a public space, as it was in Cali’s city center, which was able to increase the general public’s exposure to the urgent needs of biodiversity conservation and potential solutions. Given this location, it was also able to reach about a million visits.
In addition to incremental agreements and coalitions formed behind closed doors, there were multiple notable breakthroughs, including:
- the launch of the Cali Fund which mandates companies that use digital sequence information (DSI) from biodiversity genetic resources to share half of their profits with Indigenous peoples and local communities;
- a work program and subsidiary body under Article 8(j) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) addresses the “traditional knowledge, innovations, and practices” of Indigenous, and local communities and sets up a mechanism that guarantees formal participation of Afro-descendants, Indigenous peoples, and local communities in decision-making processes under the UN biodiversity convention; and
- a global agreement to identify and conserve marine areas of high ecological importance in international waters, strengthening global ocean governance.
MIT delegates attend COP16 in Cali, Colombia. From left to right: Kevin Lin Yang, MIT Technology and Policy Program student; Marcela Angel, Research Program Director at the MIT ESI; Hannah Leung, MIT Master in City Planning and Master of Science in Real Estate student; and Silvia Duque, MIT Master in City Planning student.
Despite these breakthroughs, several key issues are still left unresolved, particularly around funding and monitoring of targets in data-poor contexts. Most international organizations agree that there is still a major financial gap to meet the 2030 goals. The annual climate finance needed to match countries’ climate action goals is currently at $8.1 trillion USD, and will steadily increase to over $10 trillion USD from 2031 to 2050, marking a sixfold increase from $1.3 trillion USD in the year 2021. These financial concerns were echoed across multiple sessions across COP16, and they are agreed to be a common barrier to achieving various countries’ climate goals.
MIT’s engagement, led by the MIT ESI, included the participation of over 10 delegates — including faculty, researchers, and students — from groups including the MIT ESI; the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS); the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP); the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS); and MIT’s Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy. They each participated in major roundtables and presented research to fellow delegates in over 15 spaces across the Blue and Green Zones.
Please keep an eye out for a follow-up article that will detail more of MIT and the MIT ESI’s involvement in COP16.
Governing Critical Mineral Mining and the Clean Energy Transition
As the global community races to mitigate climate change, demand for many metals and minerals is expected to increase to supply the production of wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles for the clean energy transition. At the same time, countries are expected to continue to demand these materials for infrastructure, consumer technology, and defense. The International Energy Agency estimates that these trends could contribute to a 150% increase in global demand for copper between 2023 and 2040, a doubling of demand for cobalt and nickel, and an 870% increase for lithium.
Yet mining can create serious environmental and social impacts in local areas of operation. For example, mining and the processing of natural resources uses large amounts of water, which can exacerbate scarcity in drought-prone regions also under stress from climate change. Mining can also pollute water, soil, and air, and necessarily involves major changes in land use, often displacing pre-existing populations.
At the same time, geopolitical tensions between the US and China could threaten mineral supply chains that are needed to facilitate rapid deployment of clean energy technology, leading countries that have long depended on mineral imports to invest more in mining. These emerging trends require effective local, national, and international governance to ensure a just energy transition.
Earlier this month, Program Scientist Scott Odell, who leads the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative’s (ESI’s) Mining and the Circular Economy program, participated in a panel discussion on these topics organized and moderated by Maria-Therese Gustafsson, Associate Professor of Political Science at Stockholm University, Sweden. Entitled “Governing Critical Raw Materials and the Energy Transition: Challenges for Socio-Environmental Sustainability,” the event convened four researchers from different parts of the world to consider the current state of critical mineral governance, as well as challenges and opportunities to improving it. The meeting offered a unique opportunity for ESI staff to engage with other scholars working on critical mineral mining governance and highlighted the urgent need for attention to this issue from scholars, industry, and policymakers.
In her remarks, panelist Erika Weinthal, John O. Blackburn Distinguished Chair in Environmental Social Systems at Duke University, United States, noted the complexity of mineral governance given the long supply chain of extraction, processing, and incorporation into final products, and pointed out that while much attention has been paid to international and national-level governance, more attention is needed on the local impacts of mining. Susan Park, Professor of Global Governance at University of Syndey, Australia, presented an analysis of 44 transnational mineral governance initiatives, showing that most focus on supply chain security and energy access, with insufficient attention to environmental and social harms of extraction.
MIT ESI Program Scientist Scott Odell (second from left) responds to a question from the audience. Other speakers, from left to right, include Kløcker Larsen, Stockholm Environmental Institute; Hyeyoon Park, University of Stirling; Susan Park, University of Sydney; Erika Weinthal, Duke University; and Maria-Therese Gustaffson, Stockholm University. Photo credit: Stockholm University
Hyeyoon Park, Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Stirling, United Kingdom, raised concern that geopolitical pressures to decouple from China — which dominates the metal processing industry and the mining of some metals — puts at risk China’s incentive to participate in transnational mineral governance mechanisms. From a specific national case, Kløcker Larsen, Senior Research Fellow on Rights and Equity at the Stockholm Environment Institute, discussed concerns that mineral deposits in Sweden tend to be concentrated on Indigenous Sámi lands, and that traditionally, regulatory measures have been insufficient to protect human rights. However, he noted that space is opening in the court system to better respond to community concerns.
For his part, Odell presented case study results from his research in Chile, the world’s largest producer of copper and second largest of lithium. (See related: “Hydrosocial Displacements: Climate Change and Community Relations in Chile’s Mining Regions.”) Specifically, he noted that the impacts of climate change and expanded mining are resulting in conflicts over water in Chilean mining regions. New efforts to address these challenges through seawater desalination and greater collaboration between companies and communities are helping, but risk simply displacing the negative impacts of mining downstream and/or to more vulnerable communities. Odell concluded his remarks by highlighting three broad challenges and opportunities for critical mineral governance that emerge from the Chile case:
- Mine better, especially with regard to community relations, mine closure, and tailings management;
- Advance the circular economy so that more metal is recycled, and not only mined;
- Develop methods to mitigate energy and metal consumption.
Building from these points, Odell expressed optimism that the current high level of public attention on critical minerals creates a unique opportunity for society to rethink and redesign our consumption and production systems to be more sustainable.
The event was co-organized by the Nordic Institute of Latin American Studies, the Mistra Mineral Governance Program, the GRIP-ARM project, and the EPPLE Group at Stockholm University.
Betting on Climate Solutions at Climate Week NYC 2024
By: Marcela Angel, Research Program Director
At Climate Week NYC, The Rockefeller Foundation brought together 16 Fellows demonstrating a “big bet mindset,” or the belief that it is possible to use large-scale solutions to address climate change. I had the opportunity to be part of the inaugural cohort of fellows, focused on Latin America and the Caribbean, where I’ve highlighted the Environmental Solutions Initiative’s (ESI’s) big bet to create participatory monitoring systems that increase community resilience against predictable climate risks.
From June to September, other Fellows and I participated in a leadership development program centered on the Big Bets Toolkit, which is The Rockefeller Foundation’s how-to guide on promoting transformative change effectively and at scale. The program, facilitated by the global design and innovation company IDEO, culminated with the Big Bets for Climate Futures event at the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly 79 (#UNGA79).
The 2024 cohort of The Rockefeller Foundation’s Big Bets Climate Fellows during Climate Week NYC. Photo credit: Natalia Vasquez
During the event, following a dialogue between marine biologist Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and journalist Elizabeth Kolbert, the cohort of Fellows presented projects that contributed to answering four questions about what the world could look like if we truly embraced climate solutions, building on Johnson’s recently launched book, What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures.
The questions are as follows:
What if the people most affected showed us the way?
What if we reimagine financing, regeneratively?
What if we valued our landscapes differently?
What if technology was a tool and not a mode?
Divided in groups according to the themes that connected our projects, the first group addressed the people-centered question by highlighting the voices of four local environmental leaders, including indigenous leaders and women activists who embody alternative and more inclusive pathways for development; the finance group offered equations on how to align incentives to transform extractive models into regenerative futures; the landscapes group put forward models that leverage biodiversity, lands, and water to sustain healthy and prosperous communities and ecosystems; and lastly, the technology group provided vivid visualizations on how technology can help collect and analyze data to make informed decisions in the legal, scientific, public health, and climate adaptation realms.
Speakers in the technology group converse. From left to right: Big Bets Climate Fellows Erika Berenguer, Reinhold Gallmetzer, Avriel Diaz, and Marcela Angel; followed by the Lead of Convenings and Networks, Nathalia A. M. dos Santos. Photo credit: Natalia Vasquez
A Community-Centered Data-Driven Approach to Climate Adaptation
As part of the technology group, I presented the ESI’s work in Mocoa, and our quest to test the use of new technologies — such as drones and AI — to enhance the capacities of local communities to address local environmental priorities.
Environmental threats are amplified and multiplied by the effects of climate change. Landslides represent one of such threats, exacerbating intense pressures on frontline communities who live and work in areas with compounding risks and vulnerabilities. Nonetheless, communities at the frontlines of climate impacts who live and depend on strategic ecosystems in Latin America often face a systemic lack of data to make informed adaptation decisions. In Mocoa, Colombia, a city affected by a devastating landslide in 2017, this void has resulted in delays in rebuilding efforts, erosion of trust in government institutions, an impediment to create community consensus around development decisions, and potential climate maladaptation.
The ESI’s Drones for Equitable Climate Change Adaptation (DECCA) project addresses these challenges by developing a comprehensive data collection and forecasting system. This initiative focuses on four priorities: (1) empowering local organizations with technical capacities for data collection, (2) utilizing drones and machine learning, (3) enhancing community resilience through evidence-based preparedness, and (4) ensuring equitable access to risk information.
This project is inspired by technological innovation in the fields of remote sensing technologies and machine learning, but it is equally innovative in its participatory approach. In a context where disaster response has consisted predominantly of top-down efforts conducted by national authorities and where alternatively and inspiring small-scale bottom-up actions remain limited for the scale of the challenge, the project was able to bring to the table unlikely partners from academia (MIT’s ESI, MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Lincoln Laboratories, and the Pratt Center for Planning and the Environment); local and national government agencies (the Ministry of Environment of Colombia and Corpoamazonia); international cooperations (the Global Environmental Facility and CAF Development Bank of Latin America); the technology start-up Airworks; community-based groups (including representatives from indigenous and Afro-descendant communities, community oversight groups, youth, and victims of the landslide), and others who would not have a sit at the table without the spaces created by the project.
Ultimately, my goal as an urban planner and researcher is to transform data into knowledge and action. By harnessing technological advancements alongside community-based planning, we aim to bolster resilience against predictable climate risks, ensuring that communities like Mocoa are equipped to thrive in the face of adversity.
A Collective Vision for Climate Futures in Latin America
Aiming for transformational change, integrating novel solutions, convening unlikely partners, and with a long-term commitment to achieve measurable outcomes, the work in Mocoa is representative of the ambitious big bets mindset and principles, and it is one among other urgently-needed solutions that focus on Latin America’s natural wealth as a source of solutions. The 2024 cohort included Fellows working to fireproof the Amazon forest; create the largest edible-forest; predict the spread of climate-sensitive diseases and secure budgets for preventing outbreaks; and highlight the voices of women, indigenous people, and local communities who have achieved transformational change, among other inspiring solutions.
Participating in these discussions is crucial as we collectively seek to mitigate climate change and adapt to its impacts by developing and showcasing alternative climate futures. The knowledge and connections gained from this network of remarkable Latin American climate leaders will enhance our efforts in Mocoa and beyond, inspiring collaborative approaches to natural climate and community solutions.
To learn more about Marcela Angel’s work, you can email her at marcelaa@mit.edu.
Three Questions with Marco Herndon on Bridging Technology and Urban Planning for Natural Climate Solutions
Marco Herndon is a program associate with the Natural Climate Solutions (NCS) team at the Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI). He specifically manages the team’s partnerships with organizations in Latin America — with a focus on Peru and Colombia — at the intersection of climate change, technology, and environmental planning.
To introduce Marco, we asked him three questions about his previous work in the technology space and his aspirations with the NCS team.
You spent your early career in tech — why the transition to urban planning and the ESI? What did you learn in your tech career that is relevant to your role now?
My seven years in tech focused on leveraging technology to solve complex social challenges, particularly in terms of sustainable transportation. I became interested in planning because it offered a structured and systemic approach to thinking both conceptually, as well as spatially, about challenges. I also think planning is a rare resource in a complex, under-resourced world. Although my work in tech developed sustainable transit solutions through software and partnerships, I wanted to tackle these issues with more tools to influence tangible policy changes. While completing my Master in City Planning at MIT, I learned about the ESI through a practice-based class developing planning and design proposals to improve urban biodiversity in Colombia. The approach combined technology solutions with planning frameworks, which was intriguing to me, given my background.
The skills I learned in tech that are most relevant to my work now are stakeholder management and prioritization. At a tech company, prioritization is essential to scale a product, otherwise a company risks disorganization and engineers lose focus. In planning, it is very easy to quickly become overwhelmed by the challenges communities face, especially in terms of climate change. I also learned how to operate successfully on global teams with different cultures and communication styles, which is very useful given the international scope of our work.
What keeps you optimistic about the role of tropical forests in combating climate change?
The role of tropical forests in combating climate change is indispensable. Without them, we probably don’t have much of a fighting chance to sequester and eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere. We also know the fate of tropical forests is interconnected with neighboring ecosystems; for example, tropical glacial melt in Peru will likely impact the volume of water in the Amazon River and its tributaries.
I try to stay optimistic for a few reasons: (1) young people in countries with tropical forests are increasingly aware and engaged in environmental issues, and (2) there is increasing consensus that the challenges facing tropical forests are global and do not fall on one country. To take just one recent example: Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Brazil recently experienced terrible wildfires. We saw governments with different political ideologies share resources in the form of fire extinguishing helicopters and aid. Forests and the indigenous communities that call them home do not know geopolitical bounds. I hope that, when faced with the common challenge of climate change, governments around the world can come together and make real, tangible commitments to protecting tropical forests.
What excites you most about joining the NCS team?
I’m excited about the chance to combine technology and planning solutions to support communities vulnerable to climate change and deforestation in the Amazon. I view this work as essential to the broader climate puzzle, given that the Amazon is the largest remaining tropical forest in the world with abundant carbon sequestration and reduction potential. I also am excited about working with a new partner in Peru, which spans the second largest share of the Amazon after Brazil, which complements our experience while also offering a new focus.
To learn more about Marco’s work, you can email him at mherndon@mit.edu.
MIT’s Climate Change Engagement Program To Join the Institute’s Climate HQ
By: Grace Sawin, Co-op
MIT’s award-winning Climate Change Engagement Program has been integrated into MIT’s newly-formed Climate HQ.
The MIT Climate Change Engagement Program is an Institute-wide effort to empower the public with trusted, nonpartisan, scientifically-grounded information on climate change and its solutions. Home to a number of award-winning educational tools, including the MIT Climate Portal and MIT Climate Primer, the program has developed some of the world’s most-visited online resources on climate change.
After four years of growth at the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI), the program will now operate out of MIT Climate HQ, an office created under the Climate Project at MIT. Launched by President Sally Kornbluth in early 2024, the project represents an ambitious new model to marshal the Institute’s talent and resources to research, develop, deploy, and scale up serious solutions to help change the planet’s climate trajectory.
“The MIT Climate Change Engagement Program has, from its earliest days, worked with faculty and researchers across all of MIT,” says founding director Laur Hesse Fisher. “The move to Climate HQ formalizes the program’s critical role in MIT’s strategy to engage audiences beyond the campus, and its commitment to empowering the public with trusted, easy-to-understand information about climate change.”
The MIT Climate Change Engagement Program began in 2020 with the launch of the MIT Climate Portal, a key initiative of MIT’s Climate Action Plan to share “timely, science-based information about the causes and consequences of climate change – and what can be done to address it.” With the support of the ESI, the effort grew to include an award-winning digital primer on climate change, a podcast with tens of thousands of subscribers, a web portal packed with free resources, and a journalism fellowship that emphasizes local messengers.
As we move forward, we want to highlight the progress the program has made in each of these areas during its nearly four years of operation.
1. Climate Primer: a self-directed climate 101
The MIT ESI and MIT Open Learning collaborated with Dr. Kerry Emanuel, MIT Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science and author of the celebrated book What We Know about Climate Change, to develop this online exploration of what scientists know about climate change and how they know it. The multimedia site features eleven short digital chapters and interactive features where readers can easily introduce themselves to climate science, risks, and solutions.
The primer is used by over 100 university and high school classrooms, and educational programs in the U.S. and Europe. In 2020, it won a Webby Award for best digital editorial feature.
2. TILclimate podcast: jargon-free climate explainers
The podcast TILclimate (Today I Learned: Climate) breaks down the science, technology, and policies behind climate change. In quick, 10-15 minute episodes, host Laur Hesse Fisher and writer Aaron Krol work with expert guests to explain critical climate change topics without jargon or politics. Over 30 episodes are also accompanied by an educator guide, designed to further student understanding of climate change, with a focus on solutions.
Over its six seasons, TILclimate has attracted over 20,000 active subscribers; has been recommended as a top climate podcast by The New York Times, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify; and won a Platinum AVA Digital Award.
Most important is its impact on listeners, who have shared how TILclimate has helped them grapple with climate change in their professional lives, speak knowledgeably about climate issues with friends and family, or even become part of their workplace training. As one listener said: “This is how I get my knowledge about climate science. It’s concise, easy to listen to, and I actually learn useful info every episode. Need to teach your mom or kid about climate change? Listen to this podcast.”
3. Climate Portal: easy-to-understand climate information from MIT experts and scientists
The MIT Climate Portal is one of the world’s most visited websites for information about climate change. Designed to inform and empower the climate-curious, the Climate Portal offers a wealth of free, public resources that are nonpartisan, easy-to-understand, and science-based.
The most popular section of the portal is the Ask MIT Climate series, where our MIT Climate Portal writing team answers readers’ climate questions with guidance from subject-matter experts at MIT. The sites’ explainers, written by scientists and experts at MIT and beyond, are quick, readable primers on important climate topics, from extreme weather to electric vehicles to renewable energy. The site also features MIT Action, Institute-wide news posts and events from over 20 MIT departments, labs, centers, and initiatives focused on climate research and action. To date, there are two bimonthly newsletters that readers can sign up for.
Since its launch in October 2020, two million readers have visited the portal, with over one million of them in 2023 alone. Approximately 50% of readers are international, reaching users from over 100 countries and solidifying its intended global audience. The MIT Climate Portal is now a top three Google search result for over 950 searches related to climate change.
4. Journalism Fellowship: supporting climate reporting in Americans’ backyards
The MIT Climate Change Engagement Program also runs the MIT Environmental Solutions Journalism Fellowship, launched in spring 2021. The fellowship supports freelance and staff journalists associated with U.S. local and regional newsrooms in creating major reporting projects that connect climate impacts and solutions to the concerns and perspectives of their audiences. Climate journalism is often limited to national news outlets, and although this coverage is essential, localizing climate reporting has proven to engage diverse audiences and drive community-based climate solutions. Our fellows have reported from local newsrooms in over a dozen states, including Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Louisiana, Kentucky, Arizona and West Virginia.
The fellowship’s third cohort is preparing for publication in fall 2024, with projects covering hydrogen production in Appalachia, U.S. carbon markets in Oregon, the energy transition in Utah’s coal country, and other topics related to the emerging low-carbon economy.
The MIT Climate Change Engagement Program’s managing editor, Aaron Krol, will assume leadership of the program as director Laur Hesse Fisher leaves her role in September 2024.
“It’s a very exciting time to be working on climate topics at MIT, as the Institute deepens its commitment to making a real-world impact on the course of climate change,” says Krol. “At MIT Climate HQ, our public engagement projects will now join the heart of that effort.”
To follow the publications from the MIT Climate Change Engagement Program and its journalism fellows, visit climate.mit.edu, subscribe to the bimonthly newsletter, and follow the program on LinkedIn.
Three Questions on Nature-Based Climate Solutions With ESI Research Affiliate Martin Camilo Pérez Lara
By: Sophia Apteker, Administrative and Communications Assistant
When I videocalled Martin Camilo Pérez Lara the other day to discuss his new position as a research affiliate of the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI), two canvas paintings hung simply on a tan wall behind him. The one on the left was long and rectangular, depicting a person cutting through a wispy forest. The one on the right was square. It showed a marine ecosystem, a person swirled in a sea of blue and green.
Martin grew up in a family of artists. Earlier in his life, he thought maybe he’d be an artist, too.
“When I started to make many murals, I became very interested in — and I started to paint — environmental issues: animals, ecosystems, natural forests, ecosystem processes,” Martin explained of his work. “Afterwards, I decided to explore creative opportunities in natural sciences, and I also really liked math. So with this mix, I decided to study forestry engineering.”
Martin has since become a forestry engineer with a master’s degree in international affairs. His impressive resume features high-level positions with the Ministry of Environment in Colombia, the World Bank in Mexico, the United Nations in Latin America, the Center for Clean Air Policy, and currently, the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) US.
At the ESI, he will play an active role in facilitating discussions with various actors in the carbon market chain — including local communities, national governments, market developers, and standards accreditors — to identify how and where improvements can be implemented so that quality and social justice are centered. The ultimate goal? Applying insights from his team’s well-rounded research to inform future laws, public policies, and projects that promote ecosystem protection while prioritizing the people who live there.
To introduce Martin, I asked him three questions about nature-based climate solutions.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Currently, you work for the WWF US. What is the connection between the work you do there and the work that you do for the ESI?
The WWF US is the umbrella for the time I am dedicating to MIT research. This is the place where I am building the knowledge and activities in different landscapes in the world.
The work that I am doing for WWF US is as a Director for the Forest Climate Solutions Impact and Monitoring Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) program, where we create a system to monitor impact in different landscapes, including Brazil, Madagascar, Mexico, Peru, and Vietnam. Additionally, we are developing new market approaches in Colombia and other Latin American countries and supporting the creation of environmental integrity criteria in the US and international instances.
In these landscapes, I help teams create the best approach to monitoring the impact that NBS will have at both local and international levels.
You’ve previously mentioned that a key highlight of your career has been creating and promoting Fair Deals as a management framework for carbon markets, and that these efforts have significantly improved the inclusivity and effectiveness of climate finance solutions. Can you explain what these solutions looked like before, if any, and what they’ve looked like since implementing Fair Deals?
The carbon markets and biodiversity credits — but especially the carbon markets because they are a mechanism with a longer history — have two main problems.
The first problem is that some of those who establish the baselines in the carbon markets lack environmental integrity or quality in their work. Consequently, they sometimes inflate the baselines to secure more credits. This results in a significant issue: absence of quality.
The second one is that the agreement between the breakout companies that you need to write the documents to certify the carbon obtained by the local communities actions — that is, the people who are living with the forest and can change or maintain the relationship with the forest to reduce deforestation or degradation — these agreements are not just or equitable regarding the community’s efforts.
The community performs the work in the field: they plant the trees, they protect the forest, they do almost everything. And the technical company — the private company — many of them make the negotiations to generate the certificates. To do this technical work, they take between 20% to 50% of their results, normally, during the duration of the projects, which is 20 to 30 years. That is tons and tons not just of carbon dioxide, but of money: money that should be implemented in more actions in the field; money that should been directly received by the communities. The quality and long-term operation of forest mitigation projects are of interest to both the communities and other market actors who seek a viable operation in the long term.
To address the first problem, I collaborated with Ministries of Environment and climate change commissions across Latin America, as well as market actors, to create and implement carbon accounting and traceability systems. Currently, I am focused on implementing models that adhere to environmental integrity criteria on a landscape scale.
To solve the second problem, which in my view is the most important, we created the “just or fair agreements” concept where we build the capabilities within local communities. In this new model, the community is the center. The people interacting with forests don’t need to accept inequitable agreements. This increases their possibility of maximizing investments related to climate change mitigation, improving local livelihoods.
Local communities are pivotal to the work that you do. Why is it important that these communities are prioritized?
The main reason is that I have a lot of empathy for local communities, their livelihoods, and their needs. I am not part of these communities, but I believe that their forestry governance is the key for stability and durability in long-term climate mitigation results.
The other issue is that if we don’t work with these communities — the people who live with the ecosystems — and if we don’t invest in their development plans, we will only implement a project that produces short-term results, after which we will return to the starting point. In climate terms, “returning to the starting point” means putting the planet at risk.
So, the communities’ power in the environmental markets must be asserted.
Celebrating the Challenge: The ESI at 10 Years
The ESI was established in May 2014, and we are now celebrating our ten-year anniversary. This brief note is not intended to capture in any comprehensive way all that we have accomplished during this span of time. Instead, it attempts to delineate highlights in our trajectory, especially as we look toward the next chapter.
At its inception, the desire for a commitment to address multiple challenges facing the planet – climate change chief among many – had been in discussion at MIT for some time. A group of professors and researchers at the Institute had met regularly for years and discussed, wrote proposals and advocated to senior administration for an initiative focused on the environment. By way of their sustained efforts, the ESI was inaugurated with Prof. Susan Solomon as the founding director. I took over as director 18 months later in October 2015.
The ESI was launched with two first-order objectives: to establish a minor in environment and sustainability available to all MIT undergraduates and to launch a research effort across diverse topics in the environment, sustainability and climate change. The research portfolio was founded with two rounds of seed grants to multidisciplinary teams across departments at MIT. Today, ESI research is comprised of six programs including Mining and the Circular Economy; Natural Climate Solutions; Climate Justice; Cities and Climate Change; Plastics and the Environment; and Arts, Media and AI.
The ESI also created and expanded a major effort to engage the public and communicate all aspects of climate change beyond MIT. We refer to the fruits of this effort as the “three Ps” – the Climate Portal, the Climate Primer and the TILClimate podcast.
All three legs of the ESI – research, education and engagement – have become instrumental at MIT in offering varied and rich experiences to students, opportunities for research to the MIT faculty and understanding and learning to those beyond our campus and worldwide. Listing and describing all that we have done since our launch would constitute a very, very long article. I will simply note there is much to celebrate about the past ten years.
First-year MIT undergraduates at an ESI event featuring US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse in 2017. Photo courtesy of Stephanie McPherson.
I will also note that there is much left to do – more than many would have predicted ten years ago. While the rate of growth of global emissions has decreased, emissions are still increasing, 1.3% in 2022 and 1.1% in 2023, amounting to 410 million tonnes to a new record high of 37.4 billion tonnes. Global biodiversity loss – a much more difficult challenge to assess – likely increased greatly in the ten years since the ESI started operating. In the Living Planet Report 2022, the World Wildlife Fund asserts that global wildlife populations have been reduced by 69% since 1970. And recently, the Stockholm Resilience Center announced that six of nine Planetary Boundaries have been breached and are now at high risk.
While I could go on in this sobering way with many other markers of the enormous challenge that has grown ever more complex and seemingly difficult these past ten years, I risk creating ever greater despair that may contribute to ever greater stasis. In fact, for many years now there has been a concerted effort to adopt a decidedly positive and forward-looking attitude toward our environmental challenges. Many in the scientific, policy, business and advocacy communities have been focusing on communicating positive perspectives that are intended to drive action and momentum, from Katharine Hayhoe’s regular messages as Chief Scientist for the Nature Conservancy to Hannah Ritchie’s climate optimistic book, Not the End of the World.
I have been doing the same for some portion of the communications I engage in, whether speaking to an audience, writing articles or otherwise discussing climate change, biodiversity loss and other environmental issues. Yet, when I have done so I experience an almost imperceptible internal pause; it feels like something of a discontinuity of belief in my own words. Can we really be as optimistic as some, including myself, believe we should be?
This pause becomes a full-on break when I contend with messages that use a forward-thinking and self-consciously positive perspective to intentionally or unintentionally diminish the challenge and open the door to greenwashing. Can we really continue to expect “natural” gas – an extremely powerful greenhouse gas – to be managed responsibly and act as a “bridge” fuel to decarbonization? How much longer will people erroneously believe that wood for fuel (mostly in the form of wood pellets) is a carbon neutral or negative emissions heat source? Have we learned our lesson of rampant mismanagement and outright fraud in the carbon offset market? Does the current fossil fuel industry media blitz on carbon capture achieve anything more than open up a new tactic for climate action delay? This list of questions about miseducation and misinformation could go on and on.
Eight and a half years ago when I agreed to be the director of the ESI we used the slogan, “The Time is Now” to focus attention not on 2100 or 2050, but on research and actions that can deliver meaningful results now, or as soon as possible. Ten years later the time is still now, actually more now than ever.
This is where the ESI has landed, between the need for active optimism in light of enduring and often purposefully exacerbated challenges and the urgency for actions now. Frankly, we have no other pathway than to endeavor to expand our work and engage deeply in solutions across environmental challenges. The planet and life on Earth don’t really care whether we are optimistic or not. Our next chapter has to be as much about results as the first chapter has been. And now with the announcement of The Climate Project, the ESI is positioned as a key asset across research, education and engagement to accelerate the creation and deployment of solutions for best results as soon as possible.
In the early days of the ESI, we also had another oft-repeated mantra that went something like the following: “Possibly the most important and durable solution we can deliver to the world are a steady stream of well-educated and deeply motivated students.” This, because students leave MIT and continue their journey for decades to come. What they do in the world, hopefully motivated by a sense of accomplishment on environmental topics while at MIT, could be one of the more important game changers we can offer. I believe this more than ever because since ESI’s earliest days students tell me how much they value the initiative.
So, I leave you with a few words from a former MIT undergraduate from the class of 2020 who has been working in wind energy since she graduated. I had not heard from her for a couple of years. She wrote the following to me just a few days ago: “The initiative had a monumental impact on my time at MIT…and I’m glad it continues to be a resource for students trying to figure out how they could possibly contribute.”
J.E. Fernández, Director MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative
May 31, 2024
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Concluding the ESI’S Two-Year Pilot Project in Mocoa, Colombia
By: Danielle Baez, Research Assistant at Pratt Institute
In 2017, a devastating landslide in Mocoa, Colombia caused the death of over 300 people and affected 22,000 more, including over 2,900 indigenous people belonging to nine different communities, according to Mocoa’s reconstruction Plan CONPES 3904. Corpoamazonia, the regional environmental authority for the region, has estimated that approximately 30% of the urban area is still located in high-risk areas, as portions of the displaced population have not been resettled and efforts to build an early warning system remain limited.
Following a sequence of planning workshops organized in partnership with MIT DUSP, the ESI partnered with the aforementioned Corpoamazonia (Corporación Autónoma Regional para el Desarrollo de la Amazonia), Pratt Institute’s Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, the Colombian Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, and the Latin American Development Bank (CAF), among others, to launch the pilot project, “Drones for Equitable Climate Change Adaptation” (DECCA) in 2022. This pilot project aimed to develop an intervention model using an asset-based approach to community-based planning and participatory risk management with the development of technological tools for landslide monitoring.
The participatory monitoring model works through robust stakeholder engagement and the construction of a Community Researchers Network (CRN) that gives seven community leaders from varied backgrounds a seat at the table, with the ability to participate and drive much of the outreach strategy and community involvement with decision making. It pioneers new applications for unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) and integrates machine learning to process landslide susceptibility data. Ultimately, the goal of this work is to strengthen the community’s planning and risk management capacity and to build technology-enhanced strategies to monitor and respond to climate change impacts in areas facing structural challenges.
In March 2024 — after months of testing drone flights to map the middle part of the Rio Mulato watershed — the project partners convened in Mocoa to present the results of the pilot. Over the course of three days, the team facilitated and engaged in a series of workshops and public meetings to reflect on the use of the information to generate adaptation indicators and to introduce the prototype of the landslide susceptibility visualization platform to the community. Moreover, after gaining insight from this first phase, the team started delineating work areas for a potential second phase and its possibilities, including how to create a data service for financial institutions that could support data collection efforts in the future. Hosted by Corpoamazonia, the delegation included members from the ESI and project partners from Pratt Institute’s Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, as well as representatives from CAF Development Bank of Latin America, the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, and the Community Researchers Network.
Combining technology development and community-based planning
While the project is ambitious both in its technological development and in its community engagement efforts, getting the drone in the hands of the local pilots and determining the ideal parameters for the data collection was not an easy feat. One of the primary reasons drones were chosen as the mechanism for mapping the watershed is the difficulty of the environment itself. The drone has to fly below the constant cloud cover characteristic to the Andean-Amazon piedmont region, but just above the dense forest cover in order to accurately create digital terrain models. It took an enormous amount of collaboration and calibration between teams in Mocoa; Bogotá; Cambridge, Mass.; New York City; and Panamá City to build the local technical capacities to fly the drones while honing in on exactly what speed, height, and even flight patterns were optimal to capture the highest quality crucial data in the steep slopes near Mocoa.
A staff member from Corpoamazonia’s data collection team works in the field. Photo credit: Duber Rosero
The project also explored different machine learning methods to better understand what factors most heavily contribute to landslide susceptibility in Mocoa and to develop the most accurate landslide susceptibility model based on collected data and key hydrological, geological, and geomorphological features. While a variety of machine learning models are still being tested and data continues to be integrated, a first model resulted in an accuracy upwards of 92% for landslide susceptibility monitoring.
”This model has potential applications in informing urban planning, including the identification of almost real-time changes in susceptibility, the identification of areas of priority for direct intervention and mitigation works, and the generation of data and outputs for the early warning system,” explained Maritza Garzon, project coordinator at Corpoamazonia. “But this requires increasing the coverage and frequency of the data collection efforts. The model is also determined by the availability of a detailed inventory of historical landslide data which can be hard to come by, robust local meteorological and seismic data, and the quality and resolution of the data collected, which can be difficult [to access] due to the environmental challenges of the cloud cover and density of the vegetation.”
Beyond the technical component, the project has devoted equal efforts to community engagement and strengthening local capacities for risk understanding and management, as exemplified through the aforementioned CRN.
“Technology development can only bring us so far,” said Juan Camilo Osorio, associate professor at Pratt’s Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, and founding partner and co-investigator of the project. “At the heart of the project, DECCA has launched a Community Researchers Network to acknowledge and position grassroots leadership to guide the creation of a genuine community-based planning and risk management process. We are grateful for the opportunity to help strengthen local technical capacity to investigate, communicate, and imagine opportunities to address the risk of landslides and inundation in Mocoa.”
The CRN has been working to strengthen the alliance between the institutional and academic entities and the community of Mocoa itself to raise awareness on the landslide susceptibility and the risks and opportunities around landslide monitoring and community action.
As part of this visit, the CRN convened, presented the work, and co-facilitated a series of local events, including a public meeting and Q&A session; an adaptation indicators workshop with the municipality and other local, regional, and and national entities; and a roundtable with academic institutions to further understand how a partnership could expand opportunities and refine the understanding of landslide susceptibility in the area.
“The CRN has emerged as the driving force behind outreach and impact, increasing the interest of the community to engage with more sophisticated data in their understanding of risk,” said Lucy Milena Castillo Landazury, CRN member, during the public meeting. “This active engagement has guided the project, and hopefully subsequent planning decisions, that will make Mocoa more resilient to future disasters.”
Lucy Castillo, member of the CRN, presents the prototype susceptibility map at a public meeting.
Photo Credit: Danielle Baez
Envisioning the next phase
As a pilot project, this work represented a first attempt at mobilizing the expertise of the academic community and financial resources from the Global Environmental Facility through the CAF Development Bank of Latin America to promote knowledge of landslide risk awareness through a deeply participatory process in a context of contention, distrust, and high climate risks.
Despite encountering numerous obstacles, the team has gleaned invaluable insights from this first phase that have provided the proof of concept needed to define priorities for a second phase.
“Looking at the future of the project, we envision to build on the strengthened data collection capacities to start cultivating local data processing capabilities and improving the landslide susceptibility models with more frequent updates and broader coverage; to continue to empower the Community Researchers Network with greater autonomy; to enhance collaboration between technical elements and community stakeholders, alongside official advisors and newfound allies; and to broaden access to diverse risk information while enhancing interoperability with early warning systems” said Marcela Angel, research program director at the ESI.
This future phase could be focused on strengthening technical and technological capabilities for landslide susceptibility monitoring, developing actions that strengthen the capacities of vulnerable communities in Mocoa for risk preparedness and nature-based risk reduction actions, disseminating risk information with a focus on equitable access, and leveraging the technological infrastructure and network of partners for the implementation of nature-based solutions for climate adaptation.
The trip concluded with a workshop in Bogotá focused on opportunities to involve microfinance institutions and how to use landslide susceptibility data to catalyze financial inclusion for the region, and possibly fund the technological and human capacity that has been built out as a result of this project. Taken together, these actions set up a pathway for the continuation of a partnership that has been bridging the gaps in technology development and community engagement for climate risk monitoring in Colombia.
The DECCA project is supported by the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development of Colombia, with the economic support of the Global Environmental Facility and implementation through CAF Development Bank of Latin America. Questions about DECCA can be directed to Marcela Angel at marcelaa@mit.edu.