The role of technology in combating climate risk was the focus of a roundtable discussion convened by Community Jameel , the global philanthropy, and Save the Children on the sidelines of the 2020 World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting in Davos. Fady Jameel, President, International of Community Jameel co-chaired the discussion with Kevin Watkins, Chief Executive Officer, Save the Children UK, and keynote remarks were delivered by Professor Alice P. Gast, President of Imperial College London, which partnered with Community Jameel to launch the Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics (J-IDEA) in October 2019. Participants at the roundtable included representatives from philanthropy, the private sector, academia, and intergovernmental and multilateral development institutions, with the engaged discussion moderated by Raj Kumar, Founding President and Editor-in-Chief at Devex.
Opening the meeting, Fady Jameel described his experiences on a recent field visit to Turkana county in northern Kenya, where Save the Children is responding to acute malnutrition among the community there. Community Jameel and Save the Children exploring innovative ways to provide accurate, high-resolution early warnings of malnutrition and strengthen the resilience of pastoralists to climate change, in collaboration with J-IDEA at Imperial College London, and others.
As well as data-driven solutions, the meeting at Davos addressed a number of issues affecting vulnerable communities at risk of severe malnutrition, including housing, access to energy, access to finance, livestock, and climate, and a range of responses that were technological, structural and behavioural.