Climate Mitigation

I have been involved in climate research for many years. During this time, my research has revealed much about climate change and what some of the culprits are. It seemed each project brought with it more discouraging findings.

My work in climate mitigation started because after decades of delivering this bad news about climate change, I felt it was time to start making an impact to slow down or reverse the trends I had been observing. In 2006, at the United Nations, I gave a passionate speech about climate change to a group of high school students. A shy African girl asked “What are you personally doing about this problem?”  I had nothing to say.

Her words prompted me to start being actively involved in the problem of climate change. Project Surya was launched as a mitigation effort to help mitigate the effect of black carbon from biomass fuel cooking in developing nations. Its co-benefits will also improve health from reducing smoke inhalation, provide an economic benefit through linkages with local production and carbon credits, and provide a social benefit by freeing time spent gathering biomass fuels. Surya is an international project sponsored by the United Nations Environmental Programme.