Thesis Complete!!!

After months of research and analysis my project is finally complete, it was a very different experience than I originally expected due to COVID-19 but we adapted and made the most of it.

The goal of my research was to highlight the opportunities for leveraging Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) to contribute to improvements in food security and nutrition in Climate Smart Villages in Myanmar. Before I began this research I expected that CSA would help to improve the livelihoods of the villagers in terms of food security and dietary diversity but as I worked my way through the data this seemed to not be the case.

Across the four CSVs in Myanmar it was determined that the implementation of CSA in households actually had a negative correlation with food security. A number of different factors were associated with this decline, for example, across the four CSVs the weather in 2019 was harsher compared to 2018. This had an impact on crop yields therefore food security was also affected. The most important factor that we discovered during this research was that many CSA options have a long gestation period before any benefits can be enjoyed. When planning on implementing CSA in the future it should be considered to pair both short and long term CSA practices to ensure that households are protected on all timescales.

I really enjoyed carrying out this research, it was very unfortunate that I didn’t get the opportunity to travel to Myanmar and work directly with IIRR but hopefully we can continue this research into the future.

Climate Change and Wildfires

https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/climate-change-and-health-wildfires?utm_source=advocacy&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=blogs&utm_content=twitter

Wildfires are currently damaging vast amounts of land in California. The increased frequency of wildfires on a global scale is worrying and should be a clear and obvious sign to us all that something needs to change. Climate Change needs to be a priority for governments all over the world.

Thesis Update

We are now approaching the final week of our project. There has been a lot of ups and down along the way, the fact that we never got the opportunity to travel due to COVID was very upsetting but we all adapted and moved on.

I have learned a lot over the past few months and overall it has been a good experience. I now feel a lot more confident working with big data sets and extracting key information from them.

I am still yet to finalise my results but so far they are very interesting. Working in collaboration with IIRR has been really exciting and I am very excited and honoured to produce this piece of work for them, I hope it can contribute in some way to the great work that they do in vulnerable rural communities. I hope this research opens up opportunities for me to work with them again in the future.

Our deadline is next week so I will be very busy now trying to put the finishing touches on everything but I am excited to see how it all turns out and although I enjoyed the research I will definitely be happy to get it all submitted and take a break for a awhile.