MIT Mainstreams Biodiversity Conversation At UN Biodiversity Convention

10 delegates from MIT attended the COP16 and highlighted MIT's growing commitment to addressing climate change. They showcased the institute's research on biodiversity conservation, the role of local communities and AI.

Study in US: MIT sent a 10 delegates team to the global conference COP16 which included researchers, faculty, and students from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI), Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy, and Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS).

ESI led this delegation, the Marcela Angel, research program director at the MIT ESI commented, “There is an urgent need to deepen the relationship between academia and local governments of cities located in biodiversity hotspots. Given the scale and unique conditions of Amazonian cities, pilot research projects present an opportunity to test and generate a proof of concept. These could generate catalytic information needed to scale up climate adaptation and conservation efforts in socially and ecologically sensitive contexts.”

MIT Delegation At COP16: More Details

Such organized engagement from MIT was sent for the first time in a global conference and it is significant as it brought representatives of various groups of the institute who are working on the biodiversity. Such a team showcased the breadth of the institute's research in over 15 events including roundtables, panels, and keynote preparations across the Blue and Green Zones of the conference.

The global conference saw attendees from businesses, governments, non-governmental organisations, practitioners and other academic institutions focused on advancing the 23 goals of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) and stopping global biodiversity loss.

"The ESI’s Natural Climate Solutions (NCS) Program was able to support two separate coalitions of Latin American cities, namely the Coalition of Cities Against Illicit Economies in the Biogeographic Chocó Region and the Colombian Amazonian Cities coalition, who successfully signed declarations to advance specific targets of the KMGBF (the aforementioned targets 11, 12, 14)," says MIT's official statement.

The researchers of the ESI also provided key inputs for the creation of investment for the Biogeographic Chocó Region. The investment will be focused on ecosystem restoration, biodiversity conservation, sustainable development efforts across the region, climate change mitigation and adaptation. Biogeographic Chocó Region is a multi-donor fund launched by a coalition of Panamá, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Ecuador.

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