Keeling Curve

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Project Summary / Description:

Using networked collaboration, we provide a scalable program for twenty agroecology students in a year-long climate action project. These students will in turn teach what they learn to others in their extended communities and workplaces. The purpose of this project is to train the trainers who share climate adaptation and mitigation solutions, so that ultimately the beneficiaries of the project will be multiplied. Workshops and internships scheduled during academic vacations and weekends provide opportunities for hands-on training. Formalizing innovative workshops and internships with Keeling Curve support increased influence of student changemakers adapting strategies for cultivating community and cross-sector carbon reduction.

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Impact on Underrepresented Groups:

Hunger, drought, and deforestation are central threats to traditionally underrepresented people in regions where we work, mainly Indigenous populations. Our projects seek to empower agroecology students as they collaborate with Nicaraguan women and their families using traditional Indigenous and science-based knowledge. We believe our best hope for solving the worst of climate extremes is through empowering mainly young agroecology students to teach millions of economically poor Central American Indigenous and campesino farmers to improve their soils through the adoption of the full range regenerative practices. Women are especially important to our outreach because they are more often the ones who will manage nutrition for their families, both in the form of biointensive gardening and preparing food that improves health for their families. In our experience, Nicaraguan women are especially open to new ideas that improve quality of life, and the students involved would be the ones to share knowledge with anyone interested but especially women willing to adapt new strategies for improved nutrition and environmental conservation. 

Severe cycles of drought and flooding have damaged soil fertility, and the current political tension and Covid-19 denial by the Nicaraguan government have created additional hardship in the rural and peri-urban communities. The collapsing economy, climate change and political unrest have led to food scarcity and a precipitous downturn in availability of produce in the already fragile food systems. Lack of biodiversity in diet has consequences for everyone but is especially worrisome for youth developmental issues. Providing innovative training and internship opportunities for university students to help transform university knowledge into broad-based action and climate solutions is central to our work. 


People in the northern region where we work frequently experience food crises and must pull their children from school in order to harvest coffee or leave the region altogether to migrate. Twenty years ago, Corozo‚ Calico River flowed steadily but now the previously tree-lined banks are bare for long stretches and water in the dry season become sluggish. When Indigenous gardeners speak about their goals for the community, they worry about how the climate has changed and how droughts and hurricanes endanger their crops and lives. 


By training students to teach biointensive, carbon-sequestering gardening to receptive communities, this project helps decentralize the food supply, teaches environmentally sustainable ways to increase biodiversity and grow food, and increases drought and pest-resistant gardens. Our project is community-driven and interconnected with other projects we promote including fuel-efficient stoves, solar ovens, solar produce driers, rural bakeries, orchard development, beekeeping, and reforestation,. The potential for far reaching impact is great. 


This project seeks to expand carbon reduction impact regionally and globally by focusing on agroecology university students as future leaders who have the capacity to spread strategies of self-sufficiency and sustainability to new Indigenous and campesino communities throughout Nicaragua and the rest of Central America. Agroecology students will be both male and female but they will engage primarily with women-led Indigenous community projects that seek solutions to the problems created by climate change.

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