Subject: Register for our Virtual Event: From Gray to Green: Finding common cause for people and planet Posted: 9/16/2024 Viewed: 620 times
Join experts from SEI US at this virtual New York Climate Week event exploring how to develop solutions for both climate and biodiversity using on-the-ground research and experience, including WEAP.
Addressing connected climate and biodiversity challenges requires engaging gray areas where the complex trade-offs inherent in developing sustainable policy are at their most difficult.
Researchers at SEI US delve into these gray areas, empowering change agents who must navigate the realities of people's experiences of these issues. Such work addresses the often-conflicting demands of different parties to forge pathways that advance a wide range of interests, even imperfectly.
While we strive for just transitions toward a livable climate and thriving ecosystems, what's at least as important is how we get there – and that's where SEI researchers can inject this struggle with hope.
Speakers
US Center Director Ed Carr has served as a lead author of the IPCC's 6th Assessment Report and a coordinating lead author of the ongoing IPBES Transformative Change Assessment. He will discuss the challenges and opportunities for identifying and addressing linked climate-biodiversity challenges created by these parallel global environmental assessment processes and how they might be addressed.
Water Program Manager Laura Forni will discuss how preserving biodiversity also preserves human water supply – namely in Quito, Ecuador, which depends on the preservation of the high-elevation páramo ecosystems for reliable water sources. Using SEI's Water Evaluation and Planning software (WEAP), Laura and her colleagues worked with a Quito water utility to find the link between páramo conservation and meeting human water demands.
Scientist Doug Chalmers will focus on methods to quantify the impact of changing water management operations on aquatic habitat. Existing studies on suitable living and breeding areas for aquatic species may be greatly detailed, but are often only capable of studying smaller areas and do not connect the impact to the habitat of water operations. By studying aquatic habitat and water operations together, we can inform discussions on tradeoffs between habitat and human use in our water management.
Senior Scientist Rob Bailis will illustrate how woodfuel use in low- and middle-income countries can contribute to land use and land cover change (LULCC), which is a well-established driver of biodiversity loss. However, very little research makes an explicit connection between woodfuels and biodiversity. Rob will highlight the links between woodfuel consumption and LULCC, as well as the lack of research linking woodfuels and biodiversity loss, with forward-looking comments on work that has yet to be done in this area.
Topic "Register for our Virtual Event: From Gray to Green: Finding common cause for people and planet"
