Global Climate Change: Is There Hope for Kenya's Maasai?

Please join us on April 15th , 7:00 PM in Linderman 200 to hear the stories of the Maasai tribe’s struggles to survive the effects of global warming and climate change. Our quest speaker, Francis ole Sakuda, is a Maasai tribal leader from Kenya and the founder of SIMOOKenya. As one of the few college educated men among the Maasai, Francis ole Sakuda’s mission is to tell the world of the Maasai’s struggles to survive. Francis works on many areas of desperate need in his community including biodiversity conservation projects, solar energy projects, and the Maasai Women’s Educational Empowerment program. Maasai women and young girls often walk for 6 hours a day with heavy jugs on their backs to gather water, just enough water to allow their family and livestock to survive another day. Furthermore, the water they carry is often polluted, causing diseases. Often weak and undernourished with injuries, Maasai girls are unable to attend schools because of their water trek. Maasai women are unable to engage in their traditional economic tasks, such as bead work, because of the arduous 6 hour trek. Francis will discuss the challenges facing his people and his work through SIMOOKenya and Maasai Cultural Exchange Project Francis will be joined by an esteemed panel of Lehigh Environmental Initiative experts including Dr. Sahagian, Dr. Felzer, and Dr. Bodzin. The panel members, Francis and his family will be available to answer questions after the presentations. Refreshments will be served. For more information, please see the website~www.newhopeforthemaasai.com.

Speakers:

Dr. Dork Sahagian:

Professor Dork Sahagian is the director of the new Environmental Initiative at Lehigh, and joined the Lehigh faculty in 2004. Professor Sahagian received his B.S. in Physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, his M.S. in Geosciences from Rutgers University, and his Ph.D in Geophysics from the University of Chicago. He then served as a NORDA Oceanographer at Dartmouth College, Associate Research Scientist at Lamont-Doherty (Columbia University), and Research Scientist at the Byrd Polar Research Center (Ohio State University). He served as Executive Director of The Global Analysis, Integration, and Modelling Task Force of the international Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP/GAIM) at the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space at the University of New Hampshire from 1994 until 2004. Professor Sahagian has been conducting research in paleoclimatology, volcanology, stratigraphy, geodynamics and tectonics, global hydrology and sea level. Professor Sahagian has taught courses in Earth & environmental science, physics and astronomy, volcanology, human-climate interactions, stratigraphy, and other areas related to his research and that of his students. He was instrumental in establishing the new section of the American Geophysical Union in "Biogeosciences" and has directed his efforts to organizing and integrating a number of diverse research communities. At Lehigh, he is now working to integrate disparate disciplines in building the Environmental Initiative into a leading program for environmental science, technology, economics, policy, and the myriad interactions between people and the environment.

Francis ole Sakuda:

Simoo Kenya is a community based non-profit organization registered in Kenya as an NGO. Formed in 1994, SIMOO works with the Maasai pastoralists of Kenya in general integrated development.

The Maasai are indigenous peoples occupying the Southern rangelands of Kenya and Northern part of Tanzania. They practice traditional livelihoods of nomadic pastoralism keeping goats, sheep, cows and donkeys.

The Maasai have been marginalized politically and economically by the mainstream Kenyan and Tanzanian society. Francis speaks an the UN and in other forums to educate people about these issues.

Environmental concerns are very central to SIMOO's programs since there is a strong relationship between the environment and the people's way of life. The cultural values are also intertwined with the natural environment.

Realizing the threat of our natural environment from human activity such as charcoal burning and overuse of land, SIMOO has undertaken the following measures:

• Encouraged the community to conserve wildlife found in their territories, leading to an increase of giraffes and gazelles.
• Established a nursery where indigenous tree seedlings are grown and distributed for planting by community members and schools.
• Created a cultural resource center comprised of an arboretum and a museum where cultural artifacts are preserved and Maasai values are documented for posterity.

In conjunction with its partners, SIMOO has installed solar panels on 185 houses. The solar power from the panels provides lighting that becomes an alternative to kerosene lanterns so students are able to complete their homework assignments.

The geographic location of Kenya to the Equator allows solar power to be reliable and sustainable throughout the year. The Massai reduce the carbon footprint in their community and the adverse effects of climate change to the planet.

Dr. Benjamin Felzer:

Benjamin Felzer received his B.A. in physics and astronomy from Swarthmore College in 1987, his M.S. in geology from the University of Colorado – Boulder in 1991, and his Ph.D. in geology from Brown University in 1995. His Ph.D. research involved using global climate models to determine the sensitivity of the glacial cycles to both internal and external boundary conditions. His postdoctoral work at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder continued the use of global as well as regional climate models to study the climate of the Holocene in comparison to proxy reconstructions. Following his postdoctoral research, he worked as a Project Scientist for the U.S. National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change, where he served as the climate scenarios coordinator, providing support and analysis of future scenarios driven by GCMs and other downscaling models. He spent the next year as an assistant project manager for the hydrological component of NOAA's Office of Global Programs (OGP). In 2001 he became a research associate at the Ecosystems Center of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA in order to learn about biogeochemical and ecosystems modeling. He spent the spring of 2008 as a Visiting Professor of Geology at Oberlin College, and started his current position as an Assistant Professor in Earth and Environmental Sciences at Lehigh in August, 2008. His recent work has involved developing the Terrestrial Ecosystem Model (TEM), a biogeochemical model of carbon, nitrogen, and water cycling, to determine how multiple stresses such as CO2 and nitrogen fertilization and ozone pollution affects net primary production, carbon sequestration, and the hydrological cycle. He is currently developing the capability of running the NCAR Community Climate System Model (CCSM), a fully coupled atmosphere, ocean, sea ice, land model, on Lehigh's new 9 node, 72 core Beowulf cluster to enable experiments that include feedbacks between biogeochemistry and the earth system.

Dr. Alec Bodzin:

Alec M. Bodzin, is Associate Professor in the Teaching, Learning, and Technology program and Lehigh Environmental Initiative at Lehigh University. Dr. Bodzin's research involves the design of Web-based inquiry learning environments; learning with spatial thinking tools including GIS, Google Earth and remotely sensed images; design and implementation of inquiry-based environmental science curriculum; visual instructional technologies; and preservice teacher education and teacher professional development. He has co-developed twenty peer-reviewed instructional science and environmental education curricular projects including recently developed carbon cycle and remote sensing educational modules as part of a NASA Earth System Science Education grant. Dr. Bodzin is currently the Primary Investigator on the Toyota USA Foundation's Web-enhanced Environmental Literacy and Inquiry Modules (WELIM) project that will create, implement, and evaluate instructional modules for middle school learners for energy, global climate change, and environmental issues using interdisciplinary environmental science instruction via geospatial information technologies and the Web.