Durban, South Africa, July 5, 2024 – The 2024 EnergyWaterFoodClimate Nexus International Summit was a major success, attracting more than 600 attendees from across North America, Europe, and the African continent, including university students who drove more than 18 hours to attend the four-day event.
Themed “What We Want is Possible,” the annual summit is focused on recruiting and training the next generation of students to tackle the most vexing environmental issues such as sea level rise, food insecurity, climate change, and the shortage of clean drinking water.
Professor Nokuthula Sibiya, acting vice-chancellor of Mangosuthu University of Technology (MUT). (Credit: Ernest Nelfrard)
“We all want to ensure that we have quality water, assured food supply, climate resilient agriculture, zero greenhouse gas emissions, and a conducive climate. The flip side of these are the challenges we are faced with,” said Professor Nokuthula Sibiya, acting vice-chancellor of Mangosuthu University of Technology (MUT). “We all have a common goal to leave the world in a better state than it is right now. That is possible if we all play our fair share.”
President Larry Robinson addresses opening session of the EnergyWaterFoodClimate Nexus International Summit in Durban, South Africa. (Credit:Ernest Nelfrard)
Florida A&M University (FAMU) and MUT have a shared history. Like FAMU, MUT began with 15 students. The two schools have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU). During his remarks, FAMU President Larry Robinson, Ph.D., recounted efforts to help MUT and other South African “technikons” transition to full university status as part of a U.S. Agency for International Development grant.
Playing on the Summit’s theme, Robinson said, “What we want is not just possible, but it is absolutely necessary to sustain us on this planet.”
Robinson is a trained scientist and the principal investigator of a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Center for Coastal Marine Ecosystems $30 million grant to assist coastal communities with resilience and to train the next generation of scientists from under-represented groups.
“There is so much left on the table to be done,” he said. “This Summit gives us the opportunity to solve some of those problems.”
African Summit
Nexus Summit founder and convener Victor Ibeanusi, Ph.D., dean of the FAMU School of the Environment, was effusively about the success and future impact of the Summit.
“We started out planning to focus on South Africa, but in so many ways it became an African summit. We had people from Nambia; we had people from Rwanda; and we had the minister from Freetown, Sierra Leonne, all representing major segments of the African continent were represented,” said Ibeanusi, who was interviewed by media outlets in South Africa, Botswana, Nigeria and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). He said the Summit was a success.
“The Summit achieved and exceeded its goals. Everyone was engaged from the first session to the last day of the Summit,” said Ibeanusi, who added that the next step is to publish presentations on the Summit’s nine themes in a peer-reviewed journal. “This was not a conference; this was a summit with tangible outcomes.”
During the opening session, a senior official for Eskom, the state-owned power company that supplies about 80 percent of South Africa’s electricity, spoke about the utility’s efforts deal with “load shedding,” periodic power outages, while it seeks to transition away from an over reliance on coal given the challenges of climate change and the severe weather events associated with it. However, he warned that simply shutting down coal-fired plants has severe economic consequences, such as high unemployment for the communities where those plants are located.
The West African country of Sierra Leone also faces the challenges of providing power for its population, most of who depend on firewood and charcoal for cooking and other needs.
Sierra Leone Minister of the Environment and Climate Change Jiwoh E. Abdulai spoke of the dangers of deforestation, which exacerbates flooding, which has caused massive loss of life and infrastructure damage.
Sierra Leone Minister of the Environment and Climate Change Jiwoh E. Abdulai. (Credit: Ernest Nelfrard)
In his keynote address, Abdulai emphasized the need “to partner with subject matter experts to address issues that are not abstract to us because these are real issues that the people of Sierra Leone will face every day that are cutting across climate, biodiversity, food, water and health,” he said.
“For us, this Nexus is critical to our very existence because these issues affect our lives, our livelihoods, and our security,” he continued. “My generation risks passing on to future generations a planet that is vulnerable and prone to disease, famine, disasters, and water crises that would only get worse as the climate crisis gets worse, if we don’t start addressing them.”
The warming climate is affecting communities as more frequent severe weather events triggers flooding that leads to landslides, deaths, infrastructure damage and displaced populations. Kwazulu-Natal and Sierra Leone have both been affected by flooding within the last year.
A Summit for Students
One of the key focus areas of the Summit is to recruit and train the next generation of scientists to address the pressing environmental issues of our time. Some students drove more than 18 hours from the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town to attend the Summit. Participants also came from the University of South Africa, MUT, and Durban University of Technology. More than 100 high school students from throughout Kwazulu-Natal province also attended.
Ten FAMU undergraduate students and two doctoral students traveled to Durban to attend the Nexus Summit, where they served as notetakers during the breakout sessions. Those notes, and the speakers and panelists’ presentations will be used to produce a peer-reviewed post summit proceeding.
Presentations were based on the summit’s nine thematic tracks – water quality, microbial systems and bioinformatics, harnessing big data, zero GHG emission, achieving soil carbon goals, climate resilient agriculture, food security, AI-driven circular economy, and let a new science enterprise lead the way. While in Durban, the FAMU students also participated in various activities, including in a Zoom call with the U.S. Ambassador to South Africa, Reuben E. Brigety II.
During the Summit’s opening events, KwaZulu-Natal, Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) the Rev. Thulasizwe Buthelezi pledged scholarships for 11 high school students from each of the province’s 11 districts to study at FAMU. At the event, a representative of the U.S. Embassy expressed support for the scholarship initiative. Details are still being worked out.
Students present during the Nexus Summit Why Hack.(Credit:Ernest Nelfrard)
However, the finale and highlight of the Summit was the culmination of a two-day “Why Hack,” a “Shark Tank” style competition, during which students from almost a dozen high schools from Durban and surrounding areas competed in presenting solutions to the daily environmental issues such as providing reliable, clean drinking water. The contest was won by Comtech High School, which is located in Umlazi near MUT.
In addition to host MUT, the Summit’s sponsors included the U.S. Department of Energy, the Dow Chemical company, the South African National Energy Development Institute (SANEDI), and Miskolc University of Hungary, which is scheduled to host the 2025 Nexus Summit.
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