From the desert to climate justice: Henri Rueff's journey
Clarity comes from working in environments where the margin for error is at its narrowest. For Henri Rueff, the new Director of the Climate Action Research Area at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, that place was the desert. Having grown up in Algeria, he was drawn to drylands from an early age.
- climate adaptation
- Africa
- agricultural research
From the desert to climate justice: Henri Rueff's journey
Clarity comes from working in environments where the margin for error is at its narrowest. For Henri Rueff, the new Director of the Climate Action Research Area at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, that place was the desert. Having grown up in Algeria, he was drawn to drylands from an early age.
"I first worked in arid environments and deserts, where climate vulnerability is most visible," he recalls.
It was there, observing how a prolonged drought, or one of the extreme winters of the Gobi Desert, could destabilize an already fragile agricultural system within a matter of weeks, that the mechanics of survival stood out.
"These extreme environments were a real laboratory for me," he explains. "They make the mechanisms of vulnerability and adaptation tangible, almost in exaggerated form, whereas elsewhere they are more diffuse."
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That laboratory would shape a career spanning more than two decades, built around one question: how do the most exposed populations cope with environmental hazards, and how can we help them become more resilient? This fieldwork naturally led Rueff to agriculture and food systems.
"You cannot talk about climate resilience without talking about how people produce, store and access their food," he says. "Shocks, whether droughts, harsh winters or extreme events, hit these chains first."