As environmental challenges escalate, and the responses required become ever more urgent, tensions are emerging between the globally adopted goals and local actions needed to achieve them.
How capable are global decision-making institutions for addressing these challenges? How can we best upscale local knowledge and capabilities into global research and decision making? How do we equitably and effectively disaggregate global targets into local actions?
Speakers
Prof Michael Obersteiner
His research experience stretches from biophysical modelling in the areas of ecosystems, forestry and agriculture to economics, finance and integrated assessment, and he works across ECI's research themes. Professor Obersteiner joins the institute from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), where he was the Director of the Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program. He joined the IIASA Forestry Program in 1993 and has been leading and developing the ESM Program, which is currently the largest research program at IIASA, since 2011.
Dr. Bronwyn Wake
Dr Wake joined Nature Climate Change in 2012. Dr Wake completed her postgraduate studies at University of Tasmania, Australia, with a PhD in trace element biogeochemistry and first-class Honours in Antarctic Studies. Her postdoctoral work at the University of Southampton, UK and European Institute for Marine Studies, Brest, France focused on trace metal cycling in marine waters and their roles as micronutrients for phytoplankton.
Dr. Stephanie Brittain
Dr Brittain is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford. Dr Brittain’s research focusses on exploring how to better incorporate local ecological knowledge into the monitoring of wildlife populations and their threats, and into conservation initiatives for more effective outcomes that account for local nuances. Dr Brittain also works on the ethics of conservation research that involves people, and exploring the enabling conditions that allow positive conservation outcomes on local and indigenous held lands. Dr Brittain has experience of field research in challenging environments, communications, and advocacy for environmental sustainability, conservation science and sustainable agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia.
Prof Amanda Power:
Prof Power is a historian of religion, power and intellectual life in medieval Europe. Prof Power has been involved in developing the field of global medieval history, and new approaches to historical study that speak to the concerns of the mounting climate and environmental crisis. Prof Power is currently working on a monograph, Medieval Histories of the Anthropocene, which explores questions concerning the relations between religion, power and the construction of public rationality in the building of medieval states across Eurasia. Prof Power is interested in how these centralising processes consciously dislocated humans from local ecosystems and specific and sustainable practices, while creating powerful and enduring narratives about civilisation, barbarism, and the use of resources. A related, partly collaborative, series of projects ask about the purposes and the future of our discipline, and of Humanities and Social Sciences more generally, in the politically, economically and ecologically unstable period that we are now entering.
