Addressing water and food security challenges

The DOWN2EARTH project is a Horizon 2020 project aiming to address the multi-faceted challenges of water scarcity and food insecurity under climate change in the Horn of Africa Drylands (HAD), by facilitating community-centered adaptation and resilience to climate change impacts.

The project applies a multidisciplinary, inclusive approach, bringing together local communities, academic experts, novel decision-support tools, multi-level governance structures, regional climate centers, and NGOs. It will deliver state-of-the-art and community-relevant climate services that focus on water scarcity and its consequences at or near the Earth’s surface (hence DOWN2EARTH) to increasingly vulnerable rural populations in HAD.

The project is designed to bolster existing climate services frameworks, improve decision support to people, governments, and NGOs serving affected rural communities in the most vulnerable HAD countries (Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia), and to improve community-centric adaptation and resilience to climate change.

DOWN2EARTH includes 14 universities and stakeholders. Aalborg University primarily contributes with satellite gravity data processing and model comparisons to the project. Researchers, Professor Ehsan Forootan and Assistant Professor Maike Schumacher from the Department of Planning at Aalborg University is a part of the project's Climate/Water Data Team. 

AAU Space Group - Researchers