2022 World Food Prize awarded to Colombian climate scientist Cynthia Rosenzweig
Climatologist and former farmer Cynthia Rosenzweig has helped shape climate research at Columbia University for the past four years. Image credit: Kisha Bari
climatologists and agronomists Cynthia Rosenzweig Winner of the 2022 World Food Prize for her pioneering work in modelling the impact of climate change on global food production. Rosenzweig is a senior research scientist at the institute NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a part-time senior research scientist Columbia Climate School.
The World Food Prize Foundation awards recognize individuals who improve the quality, quantity or availability of the world’s food. The $250,000 award recognizes Rosenzweig’s achievements as founder of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP), an interdisciplinary group of climate and food system modelers from developed and developing countries The internet. AgMIP works to advance methods to improve predictions of future performance of agriculture and food systems under climate change, providing the evidence base for effective food system transformation. Her leadership of AgMIP has directly helped policymakers in more than 90 countries build their resilience to climate change.
“I am honoured to receive the World Food Prize this year because food systems are at the forefront of action on climate change,” Rosenzweig said. “Climate change cannot be curbed without a focus on emissions from food systems, and food security for all cannot be achieved without resilience to increasing extremes. A tribute to the modelers for their tireless efforts to help countries achieve food security now and in the future in a changing climate.”
Alex Halliday, founding dean of the Columbia Climate Institute, said: “From the beginning of her career in the 1980s to the present, Dr. Rosenzweig has been and has been a major ‘move and swing’ ‘, as she not only understands how climate change will affect food and vice versa, but also helps mobilize communities of researchers and stakeholders to develop evidence-based solutions to climate challenges across the food system.”
Rosenzweig recognized early on that climate change is one of the most important, pervasive and complex challenges facing the planet’s food system today. She completed the first interdisciplinary model projections of how climate change will affect North American and global food production, and she was one of the first scientists to document that climate change is already affecting the cultivation of our food supply. Now starting her career as a senior research scientist and climate impact group leader at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), part of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Rosenzweig is a Farmers who grow vegetables and fruits and raise chickens, goats and pigs. It was this experience that made Rosenzweig fall in love with farming and realize that she wanted to spend her career in this field. Her research focuses on helping farmers plan and implement breakthrough mechanisms to build resilience to climate change. Her early work made important methodological breakthroughs for early climate change impact assessments and laid the foundation for current work in the field.
“The evidence base for Dr. Rosenzweig’s work is increasingly important for feeding people due to the urgent need to incorporate climate change factors into decisions ranging from crop breeding to national agricultural policy,” said Ruth DeFries, co-founding dean of the Columbia Climate Institute.
Beginning in the early 1980s, when scientists asked, “What’s causing climate change?” Rosenzweig asked, “What does this mean for food?” She completed studies in 1985 and 1994 on how climate change will affect North America and The first forecast of global food production. Her early work was an important methodological breakthrough in the beginning of climate change impact assessment and formed the basis for current work in the field.
In 1988, Rosenzweig led the work of the agricultural sector in the Environmental Protection Agency’s first assessment of the potential impact of climate change on the United States, creating the first national forecast of the impact of climate change on the agricultural region of the United States. A longtime member and fellow of the American Academy of Agricultural Sciences, she was the first to bring climate change to the group’s attention and organized the first conferences on the issue in the 1980s.
Rosenzweig has been a major force in shaping climate research at Columbia University for the past four years.She co-founded Climate System Research Center and start International Institute for Climate and Society. She is currently helping to develop the Food Systems Research Pillar at the Columbia Climate Institute.
Rosenzweig, a New Yorker who also co-chairs the New York City Panel on Climate Change, led a team that developed new climate projections that underpin the city’s $20 billion rebuilding and rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Flexible implementation plan.she Recently listed Named one of the top 100 global climate change scientists by Reuters.
The World Food Prize was announced on May 5 at a ceremony hosted by the US State Department. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack spoke, and Barbara Stinson, president of the World Food Prize Foundation, announced Rosenzweig as the 2022 recipient. Rosenzweig will officially accept the award at an awards ceremony in October.
“Her work helps strengthen the resilience of the U.S. agricultural sector,” said Secretary Vilsack.
