Karina is passionate about poverty alleviation, social justice, and sustainability. She has experience researching development issues in Senegal, Uganda, Ghana, and the Arab region, and her main interests lie in evaluating the efficacy of development projects and innovations to combat poverty. Born and raised in Norway by her Chilean mother, Karina’s global journey started once she left for Italy to study at the United World College of the Adriatic. After graduating, she spent a year living and working in Senegal, before embarking on her undergraduate studies economics in the United Arab Emirates.
During her time at NYU Abu Dhabi, she had the opportunity to study and work in Abu Dhabi, Paris, and New York. Karina is currently working in Rome and conducting research on resilience and conflict in several African countries.
What drew you to the agriculture, food, and climate nexus in the first place? Could you share more insights on this growing crisis and what is being done to address it?
My attraction towards the agriculture, food, and climate nexus stemmed from my interest in alleviating poverty. Once I learned that 80% of the world’s poorest live in rural areas and mostly rely on agricultural work to sustain themselves, I became aware that productivity growth in the agricultural sector would be more effective at reducing poverty and increasing food security than any other sector. Evidently, agricultural production is intrinsically connected to and dependent on the climate, implying that the climate crisis is both indirectly and directly threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of million people. Within the agricultural sector, the focus is now shifting towards reorienting and transforming production in a sustainable manner. This means not only using water more efficiently and emitting fewer greenhouse gases but also adopting climate-smart agriculture technologies and practices that help farmers produce more productively and diversify the risk associated with production in environments with unpredictable climate shocks.
Your undergraduate thesis at NYU Abu Dhabi focused on the impacts of climate shocks on technology adoption differentiated by gender. What was the motivation for your thesis and what were some of your findings?
As mentioned, the climate crisis is making weather conditions less predictable for farmers. This creates uncertainty and risk amongst smallholder farmers with regards to how much agricultural technology – such as fertilizer – to invest in. To put it simply, if they invest too much of their income on fertilizer, they risk going hungry or needing to deplete their existing assets if crop productions suffer from climate shocks. Yet, if they invest too little, they risk not producing enough crops to make a living. In other words, more frequent climate shocks may make more people prone to becoming trapped in poverty, with low investments and low returns.
Using household panel data combined with meteorological rainfall recordings from Ethiopia, I sought to understand if rainfall shock (i.e. rainfall that fall much above or below the 20 year average in a particular village) has an effect on smallholder farmer’s adoption of fertilizer. I was particularly interested in conducting a gender analysis because female farmers usually face more barriers than male farmers. I find that female-headed households use significantly less fertilizer than male headed households when rainfall is lower than average. The interesting finding is that for each additional child and consumption expenditure a female headed household has, the household uses less fertilizer than male headed households. This essentially suggests that programs and interventions aiming at encouraging the adoption of agricultural technology must tailor their program differently for female farmers, paying particular attention to how children and consumption may play a different role for them.
“Agricultural production is intrinsically connected to and dependent on the climate, implying that the climate crisis is both indirectly and directly threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of million people.”
You are currently interning at the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). What do your days look like and what area of work do you focus on at FAO?
I work as a data analyst for the Office of Emergencies and Resilience in the Agrifood Economics Division. In particular, I work with the Resilience Index and Measurement Analysis (RIMA) team. My team works to formulate evidence-based policy, programs, and investments for food security. As part of this, our team pioneered the development of RIMA to measure resilience to shocks, in other words, to measure the extent to which households are able to maintain or bounce back to their level of food security after facing climate shocks and/or conflicts.
During my day, I usually work on different projects. Right now, I am finishing up a cross-countries analysis paper on the use of a subjective resilience measurement tool and how it may capture intangible elements of resilience that are not captured by the objectively evaluated RIMA tool. At the same time, I am starting to harmonize datasets on conflict modules collected by FAO in various conflict prone areas for another research paper on the relation between climate shocks, food insecurity, and conflict. I also support different country offices in conducting resilience analysis and measurement of data they have collected. Finally, I am supporting the implementation of an impact evaluation of an EU-funded project to create 225 Farmer Field Schools (FFS) in Angola.
As a young climate advocate, what do you think is the role of your fellow peers and students in aligning their professional aspirations to take urgent climate action? Any words of wisdom from a recent alumna?
I think this is a tough question to answer. I understand that people may see climate action as secondary to their professional aspirations, especially when making a living comes first. And as individuals, perhaps it feels futile to do small actions like recycling on a daily basis. I, therefore, think that the best my fellow peers and I can do is to educate ourselves on the intricacies of the climate crisis and sustainability and use that awareness to seek opportunities to integrate sustainability with whatever project or activity we are engaged with, both professionally and personally.