Director's Colloquium

Climate adaptation in Australia: successes, failures and some lessons learnt

Professor Mark Howden
Director, Climate Change Institute
Australian National University

In Australia, climate changes are hard to ignore. They appear to increasingly be impacting on things we value: ecosystems including the Great Barrier Reef, fisheries, agriculture, water resources, human health and infrastructure amongst many others. We don’t have to wait for decades. Yet our responses to the evidence of change seem to be slow and patchy. What is going on?  How can science better contribute to appropriate levels of action? In this presentation I take a look at some of the things we have done well, not so well and some of the lessons learnt on the way that may inform future responses.

Prof Mark Howden is Director of the Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University. His work has focused on climate impacts and adaptation for systems we value: agriculture and food security, the natural resource base, ecosystems and biodiversity, energy, water and urban systems. He helped develop the national and international greenhouse gas inventories and has assessed sustainable ways to reduce emissions. Mark has partnered with many industry, community and policy groups via both research and science-policy roles and has over 400 publications. He has been a major contributor to the IPCC since 1991 and is now a Vice Chair of IPCC Working Group 2 

Date & time

Tue 14 Jun 2016, 12–1pm

Location

Room:

Leonard Huxley Lecture Theatre

Audience

Staff, students and public welcome

Contact

(02)61257606