Promoting Equitable Climate Change Adaptation
Credit: Adam Kersnowski
In the summer of 2024, The Rockefeller Foundation announced the first cohort of Big Bets Climate Fellows, a group of leaders selected to advance solutions intended to reverse the climate crisis and accelerate opportunity across Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), with a focus on the Amazon Basin. DUSP alumna, Marcela Angel (MCP '18) and fifteen other individuals were named members of the inaugural cohort.
Angel's project seeks to prevent landslide deaths through data prediction and community action. Developed in the city of Mocoa in the Colombian Andean-Amazon piedmont, the project promotes equitable climate change adaptation through the integration of enhanced technologies and community-based planning aimed at developing landslide risk data collection, modeling, and forecasting capacities; informing urban planning; and promoting ecological restoration.
Angel is Research Program Director at the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI), where she conducts research at the intersection of environmental policy and planning and international development, leveraging technology development and community-based planning to advance natural climate solutions. Her previous work at MIT´s Department of Urban Studies and Planning includes the development of spatial analysis tools and qualitative research to make the distribution of ecological services from green public spaces more equitable in urban areas.