Cheryl Palm

Senior Research Scientist, International Research Institute for Climate Prediction
Associate Director, Center for Globalization and Sustainable Development , The Earth Institute at Columbia University

P.O. Box 1000
61 Route 9W, Monell Hall
Palisades, NY 10964
Tel (845) 680-4462
Email: cpalm@iri.columbia.edu

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Dr. Cheryl Palm Appointed Associate Director In Charge of Africa Programs at CGSD

Agricultural Ecologist Leads Africa Programs

Dr. Cheryl Palm manages the day-to-day aspects of the Millennium Villages Project in Africa. As senior research scientist, she is charged with ensuring that the pieces and people are in place for interventions in health, nutrition, water, energy and economics, and that the findings emanating from several villages will provide convincing evidence that the Millennium Development Goals can be achieved — and at a cost affordable to the world.

Her responsibility is complicated by the cross-disciplinary, multi-sectoral, multi-cultural nature of the collaboration.

But don't look for her behind a computer; she works in the field several months out of the year. Once the village baseline surveys are collected (measuring the health and income of various families), she's more likely to be found on the back of a rickety truck, riding through a village, talking on a cell phone — coordinating the many people and activities.

With more than a decade of experience working in Kenyan villages in her tool-belt, this California-born ecologist is coordinating the launch of the Earth Institute's first Millennium Villages. The current plan calls for a research-based village in each of ten different agro-ecological zones throughout Africa.

And if her boss Jeffrey D. Sachs has his way, the research emanating from those rural areas will provide the "proof of concept" to give rich countries no excuse but to ratchet up the number of Millennium Villages across the continent by 2015.

"These on-the-ground projects that will hopefully lift people out of extreme poverty offer my university colleagues a chance to apply science to problems of health, the environment and energy," says Dr. Palm. Also joining her in the challenge are researchers from Moi University and Egerton University in Kenya, Michigan State University, as well as The World Agroforestry Centre, based in Nairobi.

"The key to sustaining these interventions belongs to the villagers of Sauri [Kenya] and Koraro [Ethiopia]," she says, referring to the locations of the first two Millennium Villages. "They have heard many different promises from many different foreigners, as well as their own government that have not panned out."

At first, Palm was concerned that the residents of Sauri wouldn't overcome cultural taboos against blood sampling, necessary to gauge health progress, but when the day to take blood came, the health specialists were swamped.

"It's great to have someone with so much experience on the ground in Africa, working with Africans on their most pressing problems," says her colleague Will Masters of Purdue University. "Cheryl is both a scientist and a policy person, so a perfect fit for the Earth Institute."

Previous to joining the Earth Institute in 2004, Palm was a Senior Research Scientist at the Tropical Soil, Biology and Fertility program in Nairobi, Kenya from 1991 to 2001. Her research in Africa applied soil ecology and nutrient cycling concepts to more efficient management of scarce nutrients on farms.

She and her fellow soil scientists in the project, Drs. Pedro Sanchez and Patrick Mutuo, are introducing years of soil science and agro-forestry into Sauri over one growing season. Rural Kenya, prone to droughts and hunger, needs more robust production to carry its people from one season to the next and safeguard against famine.

Palm has worked throughout the tropics, with the Alternatives to Slash and Burn Program in Cameroon, Brazil, Peru, and Indonesia, investigating the tradeoffs between the environment and agricultural production at the humid forest margins, and in sub-humid, mixed-maize system in East and Southern Africa.

She received a Ph.D. in soil science from North Carolina State University after completing her bachelor's and master's degrees in zoology and working for several years as an ecosystem ecologist at The Ecosystems Center in Woods Hole.

But her highest honor may be the one bestowed on her by the residents of Sauri: the name of Jane Atieno, which means "A Girl Born at Night." According to the women on the health committee in Sauri, it's a name to honor someone whose understanding of nature brings wisdom to her family.