Dr. Johnson Represented UArizona and the Indigenous Resilience Center at the U.N. COP28 Climate Change Conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates
The 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference took place in Dubai from November 30th to December 12th, and hosted more then 70,000 delegates from all over the world, including state representatives, business leaders, young people, climate scientists, Indigenous Peoples, journalists, and various other experts and stakeholders. This conference, also known as the 28thConference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP28 for short, is the world’s only multilateral decision-making forum on climate change with almost complete membership of every country in the world. COP conferences are where the world comes together to agree on ways to address the climate crisis, such as limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, helping vulnerable communities adapt to the effects of climate change, and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 (to read more on COP28, visit the UNFCCC website.
Dr. Johnson was a presenter at two panels on Day 10 (December 10th): “Rising to the Challenge: Bridging Water and Food Policies, Practices and Financing for Sustainable Food System Transformation”, and “Regenerative and Nature-positive Agriculture.” Dr. Johnson shared his research and the traditional dryland-farmed and place-adapted Hopi crops that have fed the people for thousands years. He also emphasized that what makes traditional food systems so resilient is not the crops themselves or the technologies but the belief systems that have supported them for millennia. “Nature gives you everything you need to have, but do we slow down enough to watch the little hen cross the road? Probably not, right!?”
For a full story please visit the UArizona Native American Advancement, Initiatives & Research (NAAIR) website.