Adapting Agriculture to Climate Today, for Tomorrow, or ACToday, is the first Columbia World Project. ACToday aims to combat hunger and improve food security by increasing climate knowledge in six countries that are particularly dependent on agriculture and vulnerable to the effects of climate change and fluctuations—Ethiopia, Senegal, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Colombia and Guatemala.
For a number of our ACToday researchers, the work doesn’t just fulfill professional interests and career goals—it’s deeply personal, too. In the video profiles below, ACToday team members Dannie Dinh, Diego Pons and Tufa Dinku explain why the in-country work they’re doing has special meaning for them.
Dannie Dinh
“It’s really interesting to see how differently people respond to us…when I speak in the same language instead of having to go through translation. After a lot of these meetings, I have people coming up to me shaking my hand and saying, ‘This is a great project.'”
Diego Pons
“We expect to see the largest change in terms of temperature and precipitation. It’s also in [the] mountains, where people are the most vulnerable because they lack access to infrastructure. So [our existing] research is actually part of what allows us to embed Columbia University’s ACToday project, because we have been working in those communities for more than 10 years.”
Tufa Dinku
“I’ve lived two different lives in Ethiopia. The first one, I grew up in a village looking after goats and cows. My whole family are farmers. My focus is now on generating more data, more information…and part of ACToday is now that [more of this] information is available, how can we help different decision makers at different levels? How can we help the farmer use that information?”
ACToday has positive, measurable impacts on peoples’ lives. If you would like to support this work, please visit our Giving Page.
