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After decades of academic research and projects, he radiates the kind of practical wisdom that can help shape resilience to global warming. His eyes gleam as he recalls the look on a local priest's face during the first apple harvest.
"It was the first time in his life he tasted an apple. When we plant apples, it's mitigation [of the climate impact], but at the same time, we are solving problems. We have to find something that's doable on the ground," he said. In four years, the farmers planted 1,400 apple trees.
At the same time, communities worked to restore watersheds by building terraces and replanting clear-cut hillsides. Wolde-Georgis said the work was successful. Streams that had been dry by the end of December now hold water through the end of May.
On a larger scale, Wolde-Georgis helps build physical and information infrastructure to boost resilience, including new roads and railroads to help transport food when climate extremes cause crop failures.
Ethiopia and other developing countries also need more institutional science-based infrastructure to inform good governance across jurisdictional boundaries, he said. To meet the challenges ahead requires working in an atmosphere of trust and a spirit of collaboration, he said.
Timing Is Off: Disrupting Plant Cycles in the Rockies
At the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab in Gothic, Colorado, David Inouye's cabin near a patch of shimmering gold aspens is marked by wisps of chimney smoke. For nearly 50 years, he's been recording plant and animal activity while other observers tally snowfall and snowmelt data day by day — a scientific deep dive into time and space.
Compared to the 1970s, spring is coming earlier. There is more winter rain, and summers are longer and drier. It all adds up to disruption for mountain ecosystems, where most plants only have a few weeks to bloom. And the plants are tightly linked with pollinating insects in a delicately timed cycle.
As the climate changes, we’re tending to get less snow and warmer and earlier springs. A paradoxical consequence is that we’re getting more frost damage, said David Inouye, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland and principal investigator at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory. Credit: Jutta Strohmaier
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