Experts Discuss Climate Adaptation Strategies at Pardee Center Symposium
The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future hosted a symposium on Tuesday, November 17 at the Boston University School of Law titled, “Adaptation Strategies: Coping with Climate Change and Natural Disasters in Developed and Developing Countries.” Pardee Center Director Anthony Janetos gave an introduction, followed by presentations by Richard Moss (Senior Scientist, Joint Global Change Research Institute) and Kira Sullivan-Wiley (Doctoral Candidate, BU Department of Earth & Environment).
Prof. Janetos provided a broad overview of why climate adaptation strategies are important, noting that documented impacts of climate change on natural resources, agriculture, water, and human health are already being felt in every part of the world. He outlined the many potential responses to address the adaptation challenge — which include both public and private action at the local, national, and international levels — and focused specifically on directional goals, such as reducing poverty and enhancing human security, to provide guidance for climate change policy. To that end, he recommended a shift in the way that we engage science and policy to begin looking for policy synergies that focus on fundamental goals to improve human well-being.
Richard Moss’s presentation focused on improving decision-making to increase resilience to the impacts of climate change. He explained that there is a “climate information usability gap” between what scientists and decision-makers understand. To narrow that gap, he recommended rethinking the ways that research programs are designed and promoted to produce climate information that meets societal and adaptation management needs. He focused specifically on a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) project that he oversaw which sought to develop methods to better manage the climate vulnerability of DoD installations and facilities.
Kira Sullivan-Wiley’s presentation focused on climate adaptation in the developing world. She highlighted several themes surrounding adaptation in the context of developing countries, including the variable capacities and motivations of vulnerable populations to adapt, and the importance of clear messaging and trust among stakeholders. She explained that a key difference for climate vulnerability in developing countries, as opposed to developed countries, is that the majority of people rely on subsistence agriculture, and therefore their livelihoods are very closely tied to climate variability. She focused specifically on the links between climate variability and vulnerability in her area of research in the Bugisu subregion of eastern Uganda.
Watch the symposium in its entirety in the window above.
About the Speakers
Prof. Anthony Janetos joined Boston University in May 2013 as Director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and Professor of Earth and Environment. Previously, Prof. Janetos served as Director of the Joint Global Change Research Institute at the University of Maryland, where for six years he oversaw an interdisciplinary team of natural scientists, engineers and social scientists committed to understanding the problems of global climate change and their potential solutions.
Prof. Janetos has devoted his career to high-impact global change science and policy, earning international recognition for his scholarship and holding executive leadership positions at institutions including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, World Resources Institute, and the Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment. He has written and spoken widely on the need to understand the scientific, environmental, economic, and policy linkages among the major global environmental issues, and he has served on several national and international study teams, including working as a co-chair of the U.S. National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change. In addition to his research interests in the interaction of land systems with human needs and climate change, he has been an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Lead Author and Coordinating Lead Author, and has served on multiple National Research Council Committees and Boards.
Prof. Janetos has testified before Congress many times on issues ranging from the use of space observations to understand Earth processes, on impacts of climate change on the U.S., and on the implications of climate change for development pathways and vulnerability. He chairs numerous advisory committees for research related to environmental decision-making, and has published in both natural science and social science venues. His priorities for the Pardee Center are to foster the integration of natural and social sciences, so that it can continue its long tradition of “interdisciplinary, policy-relevant, and future-oriented research that contributes to long-term improvements in the human condition.”
Prof. Janetos received his A.B. in Biology from Harvard University and his Master’s and Ph.D. in Biology from Princeton University.
Richard H. Moss is a senior scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Joint Global Change Research Institute, located at the University of Maryland in College Park, MD. Moss’s research focuses on understanding how individuals and organizations use scientific information about climate change and other environmental phenomena in making decisions. His research has included tailoring climate and adaptation science to better fit decision requirements – for example by integrating climate science and decision support scenarios, and developing methods for decision-oriented vulnerability assessments. He has also focused on model- and expert-judgment-based methods for characterizing uncertainty and confidence in scientific information. Moss has also held several public service positions, including as Director of the office coordinating the thirteen agencies that participate in the US Government’s climate and global change research program (spanning the Clinton and G.W. Bush Administrations). He served as a technical support director, author, and review editor for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as well as chair of the IPCC task group on scenarios. He was director of climate and energy programs at the World Wildlife Fund and the UN Foundation. He also played multiple roles for the US National Climate Assessment (NCA), including as chair of the NCA scenarios working group, co-convening lead author of the decision support resources chapter, and lead author of a special report that provided recommendations on the next phases of the sustained NCA process. Moss chairs the National Academy of Science Board on Environmental Change and Society.
He received his doctoral and master’s degrees from Princeton University in public policy, and his B.A. from Carleton College. He is a fellow of the American Society for the Advancement of Science and the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program.
Kira Sullivan-Wiley is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University. Her research interests focus on the ways in which people’s environmental perceptions affect their actions and management decisions in the contexts of international development and climate change. Kira’s dissertation investigates the role of international development and risk reduction programs on the ways in which smallholder farmers perceive and manage their land in eastern Uganda. She combines interviews, household surveys, focus groups, and multiple forms of risk mapping to examine the relationships between farmers and organizations and farmers and their land. Her dissertation work, for which she partnered with the Uganda Red Cross Society, has been supported largely by the Moorman-Simon Civic Fellowship, Pardee Summer Fellowship, and the Graduate Research Abroad Fellowship.
Kira received her M.A. in Climate and Society from Columbia University in 2010, where her work focused on the impacts of climate variability and climate change on agricultural systems in sub-Saharan Africa and her B.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Connecticut in 2006. Outside of academia, she is active in improving STEM education opportunities for women.