Listen to authors, cities and businesses speak of their SUP experience.

Acting Director, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology  (IITM); Executive Director, Centre for Climate Change Research (CCCR), IITM, Pune, India 

Krishnan Raghavan specializes in climate modelling studies on scientific issues relating to “Climate Change, Asian Monsoon and Water Cycle”. Currently, he is the Acting Director, IITM and Executive Director, Centre for Climate Change Research (CCCR) at IITM and is engaged in developing in-house capability in Earth System Modelling to address the science of climate change. Under his leadership the CCCR developed the IITM Earth System Model (ESM) – the first global climate model from India that contributed to the CMIP6 and IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. He was a coordinating lead author in the IPCC AR6 WG1 report (Chapter 8: Water Cycle Changes) and a drafting author in the Summary for Policymakers.

He is a Member of the Joint Scientific Committee (JSC), World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), WMO. He and his team from CCCR-IITM published the first National Climate Change Assessment Report of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, Govt of India in 2020. After obtaining an MSc degree in Applied Mathematics from the Madras Institute of Technology, Chennai, he pursued Ph.D. research in Atmospheric Sciences at the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad. He was awarded a PhD degree from the University of Pune in 1994. He has published over 140 scientific articles/papers, supervised/co-supervised 12 PhD degrees (+ 11 ongoing) & 7 Master (MSc/MTech) dissertations. He has also offered training and lectures in Geophysical Fluid Dynamics & Atmospheric Sciences.

India

Professor, University of Chile; Director, Center of  Excellence for Climate and Resilience Research, University of Chile

Laura Gallardo is a Professor at the Geophysics Department (DGF), University of Chile.  She acted as the founding director for the Center of Excellence for Climate and Resilience  Research. She obtained a PhD in Chemical Meteorology at Stockholm University (MISU) in 1996 for working on lightning emissions of oxidized nitrogen under the guidance of Prof. Henning Rodhe. Her research interests are broad and cover atmospheric modelling  and data assimilation, tropospheric ozone, air quality in mega cities, and lately short-lived  climate pollutants/forcers. She has been the leader for a scientific network and project  studying South American Megacities (SAEMC, 2006-2012). She is the co-convener of the Pollution and its Impact on the South American Cryosphere (PISAC) initiative, and co-ordinator of the Prediction of Air Pollution in Latin America (PAPILA, 2018-2021), an  international network funded by the European Union.

She has served as a member of the Scientific Committee of the International Global  Atmospheric of Chemistry (IGAC) for the period 2003-2009, and as a member of the  international Commission for Atmospheric Chemistry and Global Pollution (iCACGP) since  2006. Additionally, she serves in the Scientific Steering Committee of the Surface Ocean  Land Atmosphere Studies (SOLAS). Laura has guided multiple theses in engineering and  atmospheric science in Chile and has (co) authored over 85 publications. Currently, she  is a Lead Author for Chapter 6 on the IPCC Working Group I Sixth Assessment Report.

Senior Researcher, Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium

Rafiq Hamdi completed his civil engineering in meteorology in June 2000 from Météo France (Toulouse, France). He completed his Master’s Degree (DEA) from the Catholic  University of Louvain (Belgium) in June 2002, which was followed by a PhD in 2005 at the  Institut d’Astronomie et de géophysique G. Lemaître in the field of urban meteorology. Since December 2005, Rafiq has been working at the research department of the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium. He is a member of the international  consortium ACCORD that develops the atmospheric model ALARO and its land surface scheme called SURFEX, which is used both for numerical weather prediction and climate modeling.

He is a member of the international Association for Urban Climate (IAUC) and Urban  Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN). He is also a member of the expert team on  surface processes within the Short-Range Numerical Weather Prediction Programme  (SRNWP). Since October 2014, he has been a guest lecturer (10%) at Ghent university. His main  interests include regional climate modelling, surface modelling, urban meteorology, the  urban climate under global warming and interaction surface/atmosphere. He received  funding for more than 10 projects from different sources (national, European, and China  Academy of Science) and he has (co)-authored 58 peer reviewed publications and 12 book  chapters. He has been a co-promotor of 3 PhDs and 9 master and bachelor students. He is one of the Lead Authors of the IPCC’s Working Group I Sixth Assessment Report. In August 2019 he was a Contributing  Author for the latest IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land.

Belgium

Research Director, Climate and Environmental Sciences Laboratory of the Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace, France

Sophie Szopa is the Research Director of the Laboratory for Sciences of Climate and Environment (LSCE – CEA / CNRS / Université Versailles – Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines) at the Saclay campus near Paris. A chemist by training, her work looks at the study of tropospheric chemistry by numerical modelling. More specifically, she uses digital models to study how chemistry, climate and pollution interact in the atmosphere. In recent years, she has been focusing on the very distant past of the Earth’s atmosphere to trace its evolution.

Her research interests include environmental issues such as intercontinental transport of pollution, chemistry-climate interactions in the 21st century. She has (co) authored over 80 publications which include peer reviewed journal articles, book chapters and other opinion pieces. Currently, she is the Coordinating Lead Author for Chapter 6, WG1 of the IPCC AR6 report. She is also a member of the scientific steering committee of the SPARC International Program.

France

Research Group Leader and Principal Research Scholar Pollution Management Research Group – Energy, Climate, and Environment Program, IIASA

Zbigniew Klimont has a degree in environmental engineering from the Technical  University of Warsaw, Poland. He worked at the University of Warsaw (Department of  Geography and Regional Studies) and then as a Research Fellow at the Polish Academy of Sciences (Department of Energy Problems). Zbigniew Klimont joined IIASA’s Transboundary Air Pollution Project in 1992. Currently, he is a research scholar with the Air Quality and Greenhouse Gases (AIR) Program (formerly Mitigation of Air pollution and Greenhouse gases program), where he works on the assessment of regional (Europe, Asia) and global emissions of various air pollutants.

He leads the development of models to estimate emissions and mitigation costs of  ammonia, NMVOC, and particulate matter (including black carbon). These models are  part of the integrated assessment framework GAINS recently supporting development of  air pollution policy in Europe. For more than a decade he has been involved in  European and Asian work on emission control strategies and has co-authored European,  Asian, and global inventories and policy studies on air pollutants and their future  evolution with a specific focus on black carbon and other aerosols. Currently, he is one of the lead authors for Chapter 6, WG1 of the IPCC’ Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). His research interests  include assessment of regional (Europe, Asia) and global emissions of various air  pollutants.

Austria

Director, Indian Institute for Human Settlements

Aromar Revi is the founding Director of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS).  He is a global practice and thought leader, and educator with over 37 years of interdisciplinary experience in sustainable development, global environmental change, long-term futures, governance, public policy and finance, and urbanisation. Aromar is a global expert on Sustainable Development; Co-Chair of UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). He is a member of the Advisory Board of UCLG, the global voice of local and regional governments from 0.24 million towns, cities and regions.

Aromar is a leading expert on global environmental change, especially climate change.  He was a Coordinating Lead Author (CLA) of the 2018 IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C. He is a CLA of the synthesis chapter on Climate Resilient Development Pathways of the IPCC AR 6 on Adaptation, and a member of the AR6 Synthesis Report Core Writing Team. He was also a CLA of the 2018 SR1.5 Summary for Urban Policymakers, and the 2021 Summary for Financial Decisionmakers. He was earlier a CLA of the IPCC Assessment Report 5 on Urban Areas, that established the role of cities and regions in addressing climate risks in 2014.

He is one of South Asia’s most experienced risk and disaster management professionals and has been a member of the Advisory Board of UNDRR’ Scientific & Technical Advisory Group (STAG) and its bi-annual Global Assessment of Risk (GAR), from 2008. He has led the design for UNDRR of the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), a global partnership to promote the resilience of infrastructure systems to climate and disaster risks.

India

Senior Fellow, Chicago Council of Global Affairs

Ian Klaus is a senior fellow on global cities and foreign policy at the Chicago Council on  Global Affairs. He also serves as director of research and policy for the Global Parliament  of Mayors and as the series editor of the AR6 Summary for Urban Policymakers. Previously, he served as a diplomatic adviser to the Urban 20 and C40 City Climate  Leadership Group.

He was senior adviser for global cities at the US Department of State. In that role, he led urban diplomacy for the United States, engaging dozens of foreign ministries and  development agencies from Africa, South America, North America, Asia, and Europe on  urbanization and foreign policy issues. He also internally managed the State  Department’s efforts to develop urbanization-related policies. Klaus was deputy United  States negotiator for the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable  Development. From 2011 – 2016, he served as member of the policy planning staff in the  office of the Secretary of State, advising the Secretary of State and Director of Policy  Planning. He has been a member of the World Economic Forum’s advisory board on the future of urban development, the Creative Cities Working Group at Stanford University, a  visiting fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Ernest May Fellow for History and  Security Studies at the Kennedy School of Government. He holds a Ph.D. in international  history from Harvard University, and is the author of Forging Capitalism (Yale, 2014) and Elvis is Titanic (Knopf, 2007).

United States of America

Dean, School of Environment and Sustainability, Indian Institute for Human Settlements

As Dean, School of Environment and Sustainability (SES), Jagdish leads the build-out of  the School, providing the strategic direction and operational guidance needed to expand  its academic footprint, research activities and network, practice portfolio, and capacity building initiatives. Jagdish will also help develop the IIHS Kengeri campus and its environs as India’s first Urban Ecological Observatory and strengthen IIHS’s profile in Ecology and Conservation Science.

He is a field ecohydrologist and a landscape ecologist with research and teaching  interests in applied statistics, environmental applications of remote sensing and GIS, ecosystem services, ecological restoration, river ecology and climate change. He loves  the challenge of understanding complex changes in the environment over time and space. He was the Coordinating Lead Author of the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land.

Jagdish was at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE),  Bengaluru where he was a faculty member for over 20 years. He has been a faculty  member at the Wildlife Institute of India and has also been an affiliate teaching faculty at  the National Centre for Biological Sciences-TIFR (NCBS-TIFR), Bengaluru where he has  been involved with the Masters Programme in Wildlife Biology and Conservation since its  inception.

India

Professor, Department of Geography at University of Ibadan

Ibidun Adelekan is a Professor of Geography at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Her research interests span across climate-society interactions and human dimensions of global environmental change, including vulnerability and resilience of socio-ecological systems to climate change in cities and coastal settlements, climate change adaptation, and disaster risk reduction. She was a contributing author on the Africa chapter of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report. She is also a member of the Expert Review Group, Race to Resilience (R2R) campaign of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Nigeria

Executive Director, Cities for Life Forum

Liliana is an architect, urban environmental planner, researcher, and an activist. Her research focuses on governance reconfiguration, integrating in the territory climate change, water, cities agenda 21, sustainable construction (involving green infrastructure), and justice issues. She is an Ashoka Fellow who designed and implemented pilot projects to promote sustainable building. She leads inter-institutional networks, and one of the founders and Executive Director of Cities for Life Forum – inter-institutional network (municipalities, universities, and civil society from 18 cities) in Peru and Coordinator – together with AMPE – of the Peru work of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy. She is a Consultant in several national and international organizations. Former Principal Advisor of the Environmental Commission and Indigenous Communities in the Congress of Peru.

Liliana is a Lecturer and invited professor in several Master’s programmes in Perú and abroad. She has published 5 books, guides and more than 180 articles, guides, book chapters and case studies (English and Spanish). She writes columns in magazines and newspapers. Her 40 years of work is grounded around Local Climate Action Plans, Concertation, Consensus Building, Capacity Building, and Political Incidence Campaigns for Cities for Life towards Climate Resilient Development pathways.

Peru

Professor, Department of Architecture and Urbanism, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro

She is a Professor of Urban Design and Planning at PUC-Rio. She is also the Extension coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Center for the Environment (NIMA/PUC-Rio), with experience in interdisciplinary research and university extension projects for socio-environmental sustainability. She leads the Urbanism Laboratory (U.Lab), at PUC-Rio.

She is a Coordinating Lead Author of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) on the chapter “Central and South America”, of the AR6 WGII, as well as of the UCCRN (Urban Climate Change Research Network), as co-author of the chapter “Urban Areas in Coastal Zones”, of the ARC3-2, and the UCCRN-LA network. She works in the areas of urban planning and design, with an emphasis on sustainability, urban resilience and adaptation of cities to climate change. and the UCCRN-LA network. He works in the areas of urban planning and design, with an emphasis on sustainability, urban resilience and adaptation of cities to climate change. and the UCCRN-LA network. He works in the areas of urban planning and design, with an emphasis on sustainability, urban resilience and adaptation of cities to climate change.

Brazil

Senior Researcher, climate adaptation, water resources management and adaptive pathways planning at Deltares; Associate Professor climate adaptation in deltas and coastal zones, Utrecht University

Dr. Haasnoot is Associate Professor on climate adaptation in deltas and coastal zones at Utrecht University, and a senior researcher at Deltares. She is a founder of the Dynamic Adaptive Policy Pathways approach to support decision making under deep uncertainty. Model based adaptation pathways, fast integrated models and signals for timely adaptation are key tools in her research. She has worked in projects related to water management and planning in several countries, including USA, New Zealand, UK, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Thailand, Viet Nam, Croatia, Cyprus, Romania, Russia. Serious gaming is one of tools she uses to socialize people with decision making under uncertainty and adaptation pathways. Marjolijn is a lead author for the Sixth Assessment Report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (chapter Europe and cross-chapter cities and settlements by the sea). Within Deltares she is the director of the research programme on climate change and adaptive planning, and a member of the scientific council.

The Netherlands

Professor of Geography, King’s College London

Mark’s research interests include social and institutional aspects of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation, with a particular focus on urban contexts. He has worked in Latin America and the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. He has served as a consultant for UNHABITAT, UNDP, UNISDR, World Bank, DFID and a range of NGOs including Oxfam, Action Aid, Greenpeace, and The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

His research is interdisciplinary and has been funded by ESRC, NERC, DFID, EC and the British Academy including large projects supported by the Belmont Forum. He has served on the international scientific steering committees of Future Earth Coasts, Integrated Research on Disaster Risk and the Stockholm Environment Institute, and as a Coordinating Lead Author for the IPCC SREX and Working Group II urban chapters for AR5 and AR6. He is co-chair of the United Kingdom Alliance on Disaster Research.

Mark has a PhD in Geography from the University of Liverpool, an MSc Marine Resource Management from Heriot-Watt and a BSc Geography from the University of Hull. He has taught at the University of Guyana, University of Liverpool and King’s College London and has been a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University and University of Cape Town. He is the author of seven books including Adaptation to Climate Change: from resilience to transformation (Routledge 2011) and The Vulnerability of Cities: social resilience and natural disaster (Routledge 2003) and over 80 peer review papers and book chapters.

UK

Professor, Graduate School of Medicine at The University of Tokyo

Masahiro Hashizume is a professor at the Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Japan. He is a physician and an environmental epidemiologist with research interests in climate change and human health, especially in current impacts, future projections, vulnerability assessment and adaptation strategies. He had his residency training in paediatrics in Tokyo, then received MSc from The University of Tokyo (1999) and PhD from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (2007). Prof. Hashizume serves as a member of the WHO Technical Advisory Groups on Global Air Pollution and Health as well as on Climate Change and Environment (WPRO).

Japan

Professor, Chair in Human Geography, LMU University Munich

Prof. Matthias Garschagen is the Chair in Human Geography and heads the Teaching and Research Unit for Human Environment Relations at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) in Munich. He is also an Honorary Professor at RMIT University, Melbourne, in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies. Amongst other functions, Prof.  Matthias currently has been serving as a Lead Author in the IPCC’s Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC), the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) and the Synthesis Report (SYR).

His research focuses on risk, vulnerability, adaptation and transformation in the context of environmental hazards and climate change. He is particularly interested in future urban risk trends and the evaluation of cities’ different adaptation options. His research findings have been published in international journals, including Nature, and a number of book projects. Before joining LMU, Matthias Garschagen served for the United Nations University where he led a team of around 20 scientists working on the assessment of disaster and climate risk.

Germany

Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Africa Climate & Development Initiative (ACDI), University of Cape Town

Nick’s current research focuses on understanding the societal impacts and risks from climate change and assessing how to respond to them. He is a Lead Author of the Africa chapter of the IPCC WGII Report with contributions to five other IPCC chapters in AR6 including assessment of climate resilient development, human settlements, water, heritage and coastal cities, adaptation feasibility, climate change literacy, and advances in the understanding of complex climate change risks. He is also the Lead Author of the ICOMOS-IPCC-UNESCO White Paper on Impacts of Climate Change on Heritage. He was appointed an Affiliate Member of the African Academy of Science (2021-25). His previous research extended security studies and criminology to the governance of new ‘Anthropocene harmscapes’, exploring how, why and with what effect, resilience has been employed as a means of understanding and responding to unanticipated and severe climate change events. In doing so his publications on responses to the Cape Town Drought have coined the terms ‘climate gating’ and ‘partial functional redundancy’ through empirical analysis of the distributional effects of responses to climate change. His PhD extended the practice of environmental assessment to better conceptualise human well-being and set minimally just conditions for equitable participation in deliberative environmental decision making.

Zimbabwe/South Africa

Director, Research & Innovation in the School of Engineering at Newcastle University

Professor Richard Dawson is Director of Research in the School of Engineering at Newcastle University, a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers.  Richard believes that engineers have a crucial role to play in developing adaptation solutions to ensure our catchments, infrastructure and cities are resilient and sustainable in the face of intensifying global change.

Over the last two decades he has pioneered the application of systems approaches to develop national, catchment, and city-scale climate risk analysis.  These are enabling engineers, planners and policy makers to map, target and prioritise adaptation on the basis of minimising the risks to people, the environment and economy.

He has published over 80 journal papers and received a number of prizes for his work, including the Jose Maria Sarriegi Major Catastrophe Research Award (2019), Lloyds Science of Risk Prize (2012), Institution of Civil Engineers’ Robert Alfred Carr Prize (2004).   He has editorial roles for the journals Climatic Change, Flood Risk Management, and npj Urban Sustainability.

As a member of the UK’s Committee on Climate Change, Richard provides advice to the government on preparing for climate change.

UK

Director, Climate and Sustainability Programme at ODI

Sarah is the Director of ODI’s Climate and Sustainability programme. She is an environmental economist who has supported policy-makers across Asia, Africa and Latin America to develop low-carbon development strategies.

Before joining ODI, Sarah was Head of Global Programmes for the Coalition for Urban Transitions – a network of 35 organisations (including ODI) that supports national governments to identify and implement the deep structural shifts needed to foster productive, inclusive, sustainable cities. She was the lead author of Climate Emergency, Urban Opportunity, the report that underpinned the Infrastructure, Cities and Local Action track of the 2019 UN Climate Summit. Sarah has also worked on climate change mitigation in cities, energy and forestry at IIED, the University of Leeds and Forests Alive. She has co-authored a wide range of academic papers, as well as reports for the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, UN Environment and the World Bank.

Sarah is an associate of the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy and a guest lecturer at the University of Oxford, University College London and the University of Manchester. Sarah holds a Masters in Environment and Development from Trinity College, Dublin.

UK

Professor, Urban Ecology, Director of the Urban Systems Lab

Dr. Timon McPhearson is Professor of Urban Ecology, Director of the Urban Systems Lab, and Research Faculty at the Tishman Environment and Design Center at The New School. He is a Senior Research Fellow at The Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University, and a Research Affiliate of the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics at The Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences. He studies the ecology in, of, and for cities to advance resilience, sustainability, and justice. In 2017 he was awarded the Distinguished University Teaching Award at The New School. In 2019 he was awarded both the Sustainability Science Award and the Innovation in Sustainability Science Award by the Ecological Society of America. In 2020 he was named an NYC Climate Hero by the NYC DOT and Human Impacts Institute and appointed by the NYC Mayor to the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC).  He has published over 100 articles, books, book chapters, and scholarly articles including in scientific journals (Nature, Nature Climate Change, Nature Sustainability, BioScience), books (e.g. Resilient Urban Futures, Urban Planet), and popular press (The Nature of Cities, Resilience Quarterly), and is widely covered in the press (e.g. The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, New York Times Magazine, CityLab, Urban Omnibus). He is a founding editor of Nature npj Urban Sustainability.

USA

Professor, Department of Geography at Hunter College, City University of New York

Dr. Solecki’s research interests include urban environmental change, and climate impacts and adaptation. He has served on several U.S. National Research Council committees including the Special Committee on Problems in the Environment (SCOPE). He is a founding member of the Urban Climate Change Research Network, and the International Human Dimensions Programme (IHDP) Urbanization and Global Environmental Change Project. He served as the co-leader of several climate impacts and land use studies in the New York metropolitan region, including the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC) and the Metropolitan East Coast Assessment of Impacts of Potential Climate Variability and Change. He holds degrees in Geography from Columbia University (BA) and Rutgers University (MA, Ph.D).

USA

Associate Professor of Science, Technology and Society at Singapore Management University

Associate Professor Winston Chow researches and educates on physical processes, impacts, and mitigation of urban heat islands, urban vulnerability to climate change, and sustainable urban climatology. He is a principal investigator in the ongoing Cooling Singapore Initiative, leading research into how a digital urban twin enables sustainable and climate-resilient urban design, as well as assessing how urban heat risks can be minimised for the city-state of Singapore. Previously, Dr. Chow conducted interdisciplinary research into urban climate risks and policies, such as for heat, droughts and flooding hazards, for Singapore as well as in several North American cities. He tweets often about climate and other issues at @winstontlchow.

Singapore

Director, Indian Institute for Human Settlements

Aromar Revi is the founding Director of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS).  He is a global practice and thought leader, and educator with over 37 years of interdisciplinary experience in sustainable development, global environmental change, long-term futures, governance, public policy and finance, and urbanisation. Aromar is a global expert on Sustainable Development; Co-Chair of UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). He is a member of the Advisory Board of UCLG, the global voice of local and regional governments from 0.24 million towns, cities and regions.

Aromar is a leading expert on global environmental change, especially climate change.  He was a Coordinating Lead Author (CLA) of the 2018 IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C. He is a CLA of the synthesis chapter on Climate Resilient Development Pathways of the IPCC AR 6 on Adaptation, and a member of the AR6 Synthesis Report Core Writing Team. He was also a CLA of the 2018 SR1.5 Summary for Urban Policymakers, and the 2021 Summary for Financial Decisionmakers. He was earlier a CLA of the IPCC Assessment Report 5 on Urban Areas, that established the role of cities and regions in addressing climate risks in 2014.

He is one of South Asia’s most experienced risk and disaster management professionals and has been a member of the Advisory Board of UNDRR’ Scientific & Technical Advisory Group (STAG) and its bi-annual Global Assessment of Risk (GAR), from 2008. He has led the design for UNDRR of the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), a global partnership to promote the resilience of infrastructure systems to climate and disaster risks.

India

Senior Fellow, Chicago Council of Global Affairs

Ian Klaus is a senior fellow on global cities and foreign policy at the Chicago Council on  Global Affairs. He also serves as director of research and policy for the Global Parliament  of Mayors and as the series editor of the AR6 Summary for Urban Policymakers. Previously, he served as a diplomatic adviser to the Urban 20 and C40 City Climate  Leadership Group.

He was senior adviser for global cities at the US Department of State. In that role, he led urban diplomacy for the United States, engaging dozens of foreign ministries and  development agencies from Africa, South America, North America, Asia, and Europe on  urbanization and foreign policy issues. He also internally managed the State  Department’s efforts to develop urbanization-related policies. Klaus was deputy United  States negotiator for the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable  Development. From 2011 – 2016, he served as member of the policy planning staff in the  office of the Secretary of State, advising the Secretary of State and Director of Policy  Planning. He has been a member of the World Economic Forum’s advisory board on the future of urban development, the Creative Cities Working Group at Stanford University, a  visiting fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Ernest May Fellow for History and  Security Studies at the Kennedy School of Government. He holds a Ph.D. in international  history from Harvard University, and is the author of Forging Capitalism (Yale, 2014) and Elvis is Titanic (Knopf, 2007).

United States of America

Dean, School of Environment and Sustainability, Indian Institute for Human Settlements

As Dean, School of Environment and Sustainability (SES), Jagdish leads the build-out of  the School, providing the strategic direction and operational guidance needed to expand  its academic footprint, research activities and network, practice portfolio, and capacity building initiatives. Jagdish will also help develop the IIHS Kengeri campus and its environs as India’s first Urban Ecological Observatory and strengthen IIHS’s profile in Ecology and Conservation Science.

He is a field ecohydrologist and a landscape ecologist with research and teaching  interests in applied statistics, environmental applications of remote sensing and GIS, ecosystem services, ecological restoration, river ecology and climate change. He loves  the challenge of understanding complex changes in the environment over time and space. He was the Coordinating Lead Author of the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land.

Jagdish was at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE),  Bengaluru where he was a faculty member for over 20 years. He has been a faculty  member at the Wildlife Institute of India and has also been an affiliate teaching faculty at  the National Centre for Biological Sciences-TIFR (NCBS-TIFR), Bengaluru where he has  been involved with the Masters Programme in Wildlife Biology and Conservation since its  inception.

India

Associate Professor of Science, Technology and Society at Singapore Management University

Senior Consultant- Director’s Office, Indian Institute for Human Settlements.  

Prathijna Poonacha Kodira earned MSc in Human Settlements from Katholieke University, Leuven, Belgium. She is senior consultant with the Director’s Office, the Practice team and  is a part of the School of Environment and Sustainability. She mainly works with the  climate change team. Her work focuses on understanding climate change impacts and  responses in urban and peri-urban geographies both from top-down and bottom-up perspectives. In peri-urban Bangalore, her research looks at how communities are  responding to climatic and non-climatic risks in the context of rapid social and ecological  changes with a particular focus on gender dynamics. She is also interested in  understanding and applying various tools to enable multi-stakeholder participation in  decision making especially in the urban context. One such tool is Transformative Scenario  Planning which facilitates her interaction with diverse stakeholders to imagine the future of water in Bengaluru.

Prior to IIHS, Prathijna has worked in various organizations ranging from civil society  organizations, academic and research institutions in the field of heritage planning and  conservation, and design consultancy.

India

Senior Research Consultant – Practice, Indian Institute for Human Settlements

Chandni Singh has a PhD in International Development from the University of Reading, United Kingdom and works at the interface of climate change and development in the global South. At IIHS, she works on climate change adaptation, drivers of differential vulnerability to climate change and hazards, and rural and urban livelihood transitions. She was a Contributing Author on the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C and is a Lead Author on the Working Group II Assessment Report 6 (Chapter 10 Asia and Cross-chapter Paper on Cities and Settlements by the Sea). Chandni is also a Lead Author on UCCRN’s Third Assessment Report on Climate Change and Cities, and Contributing Author on the UNESCO-ICOMOS-IPCC “Cultural Heritage and Climate Change” Initiative. She serves on the editorial boards of Regional Environmental Change, Urbanisation, and Climate and Development, and is the ‘Vulnerability and Adaptation’ Domain Editor for Wires-Climate Change. She has previously worked in research and practice-based organisations such as the University of Reading (UK), Bioversity International, Pragya, and WWF India across South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Chandni is also deeply interested in science communication for lay audiences and is a published poet.

Senior Fellow, Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience Research Centre, University of the Bahamas; Senior Research Associate, Climate Analytics

Adelle is a Senior Research Associate with Climate Analytics and Senior Fellow at University of The Bahamas. Her work focuses on aspects of social vulnerability, adaptation strategies and loss and damage. As a human-environment geographer, she is interested in the particular vulnerabilities and adaptation potentials for small island developing states. Adelle has worked for several years on intersections between climate change adaptation, environmental protection and development. Her research has centered on varying aspects of adaptation and social vulnerability including examining the potential of insurance as an adaptation strategy; knowledge, awareness and perception of the public about climate change; assessing opportunities, barriers and limits to adaptation; and challenges facing small islands in managing loss and damage.

Adelle is a lead author in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and the Special Report on 1.5°C, has authored a variety of academic publications and has also provided scientific services to a number of organisations including the Global Environment Facility, Inter-American Development Bank, International Maritime Organization and national institutions in the USA and Bahamas. Adelle obtained a PhD in Geography from Rutgers University (2012) and a BS in Civil Engineering from University of Minnesota and Macalester College (2005).

Bahamas

Researcher, African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town

Anton Cartwright was the ‘Green Economy’ Mistra Urban Futures Researcher at the African Centre Cities from 2013-2015. Previously, he convened the City of Cape Town’s Climate Change Think Tank and he ran the Coalition for Urban Transitions’ work in Tanzania and Ghana. His work focuses on the application of economics to Africa’s urban transition, environmental degradation and poverty alleviation and the implication of these issues for the discipline of economics itself. He holds two post-graduate degrees (in Environmental Change and Management and in Economics for Development) from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

He is an associate at the African Climate and Development Institute and a Senior Associate of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. He has completed assignments for the New Climate Economy, World Bank, The European Union, The Food and Agriculture Organization, DfID, WWF, IIED the Fairtrade Foundation and a range of local and international companies, NGOs and government departments. He is also a founding Director of the not-for-profit organisation Promoting Access to Carbon Equity (PACE), and is chairman of the board of iKhaya le Themba, an aftercare centre for children in Imizamo Yethu, Cape Town.

South Africa

Vice President for Academic Affairs – Asian Institute of Technology

Shobhakar Dhakal is the Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand since April 2021. In the past, he was Dean of the School of Environment, Resources and Development, and Head of the Department of Energy Environment and Climate Change of the Asian Institute of Technology. His main areas of expertise are in energy policy, climate change mitigation and policies, policy modelling and analysis, and cities and climate change. Dhakal was the Coordinating Lead Author of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 5th Assessment Report for the Chapter on Human Settlements, Infrastructure and Spatial Planning, and 6th Assessment Report for the Chapter on Emissions Trends and Drivers. He was also a member of the author group that developed a recent UNEP led global scientific assessment titled Making Peace with Nature, launched by UN Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director in February 2021, led by Bob Watson and Ivar Andreas Baste.

Senior Researcher – The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK)

Şiir Kılkış is alumna of KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Georgetown University, where she graduated magna cum laude with honors as the gold medalist in Science, Technology, and International Affairs. She served as Lead Author in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change for “Urban Systems and Other Settlements.” She is an author of the Summary for Policymakers and Technical Summary, Cross-Working Group box on Cities and Climate Change, and various chapters.

Her focus includes urban emissions scenarios in the context of the SSP-RCP framework, mitigation options for urban systems, their SDG linkages, multi-dimensional feasibility assessment and opportunities for shifting development pathways towards sustainability. She is Senior Researcher at The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) and scientific advisor on climate change mitigation and adaptation. As Associate Professor in Energy Systems Engineering, she is coordinator of sustainable development and sustainable urban systems in the Earth System Science Graduate Program of Middle East Technical University. She is a member of the Earth Commission Working Group on Translation and Methods and Steering Committee member of the Future Earth Urban Knowledge Action Network. Based on her research work, she takes place among the top 2% scientists in the areas of energy, environmental science, and emerging/strategic technologies and is an International Scientific Committee member of the SDEWES Center.

Her research accomplishments include the SDEWES Index benchmarking 120 cities, SSP1 based scenarios for 420 urban areas around the world, the Rational Exergy Management Model to curb CO₂ emissions, and novel net-zero district concepts. She is an editorial board member of The Journal of Sustainable Development of Energy, Water & Environment Systems, Smart Energy, Energy Storage and Saving as well as Guest Editor in Energy Conversion and Management and Frontiers in Sustainable Cities.

Dr. Shuaib Lwasa is a principal researcher on adaptation, governance and transformation at the Global Center on Adaptation. Shuaib has over 22 years of experience in university teaching and research as Professor of Urban Sustainability at Makerere University, Uganda. He has worked extensively on interdisciplinary research projects focused on African cities but also in South Asia. His publications are in the areas of urban mitigation of and adaptation to climate change, urban environmental management, spatial planning, and disaster risk reduction, urban sustainability. Shuaib is a Coordinating Lead Author of the IPCC WG III Chapter 8 “Urban Systems and Human Settlements” and Lead Author for the IPCC Special report on Land and Climate Change. He is the Past-Chair of the interdisciplinary research programme on Integrated Research on Disaster Risk.

Senior Scientist – Ahmedabad University

Professor Pathak holds a PhD and MS in Environmental Science. She is a Visiting Researcher at Imperial College London and has held visiting scholar positions at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru.

From 2016-17, she was Associate Professor and Head of the Doctoral Program at CEPT University, Ahmedabad and Assistant Professor at CEPT University from 2011-2016. She was a drafting author on the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C and the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land. Her publications focus on low carbon scenarios for India, demand-side mitigation actions and their interlinkages with SDGs.

Bangabandhu Chair Professor, Director of Centre on South and South East Asia Multidisciplinary Applied Research Network on Transforming Societies of Global South at SERD/AIT – Asian Institute of Technology

Prof. Joyashree Roy is interested in multidisciplinary approaches to understanding development challenges. She has widely travelled for research collaborations and research capacity building. Current research interests are: Economics of Climate Change, modeling energy demand, economy-wide modeling exercises for deriving policy implications, urban air pollution, water quality demand modeling, water, energy, carbon pricing, sustainable indicator development and estimation, natural resource accounting, valuing environmental services, and developmental and environmental issues relevant for South and South East Asia, informal sectors, Coastal Ecosystem service valuation.

She is the Founder advisor of the Global Change Programme (www.juglobalchangeprogram.org) which focuses on climate change research and beyond. She is also Founder Advisor of Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund Project (http://www.jusylffprogram.org) on “Tradition, Social Change, and Sustainable Development: A Holistic Approach” at Jadavpur University. She was a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Environmental Economics at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California , USA.

Professor – Yale University

Karen Seto is the Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science at the Yale School of the Environment. She is an urban and land change scientist whose central research focus is how urbanization will affect the planet. A geographer by training, she integrates remote sensing, field interviews, and modeling methods to study urbanization and land change, forecast urban growth, and examine the environmental consequences of urban expansion. She is an expert in satellite remote sensing analysis and has pioneered methods to reconstruct historical land-use and to develop empirical models to explain and forecast the expansion of urban areas. Seto is a specialist in contemporary urbanization in China and India, where she has conducted research for over 20 and 10 years, respectively. Her research is notable for its systematic use of big data and a scientific lens to study urbanization as a process and to understand the aggregate global impacts of urbanization. Seto’s research has generated new insights on the interaction between urbanization and food systems, the effects of urban expansion on biodiversity and cropland loss, urban energy use and emissions, and urban mitigation of climate change.

Professor Seto is one of the world’s leading experts on contemporary urbanization and global change, and has served on numerous national and international scientific bodies. She is co-editor-in-chief of the journal, Global Environmental Change. She co-founded and co-chaired the global research project, Urbanization and Global Environmental Change (UGEC), formerly of the International Human Dimensions Programme (IHDP) and Future Earth, from 2006 to 2016.  She has served on numerous U.S. National Research Council (NRC) Committees, including the NRC Committee to Advise the U.S. Global Change Research Program and the NRC Committee on Pathways to Urban Sustainability. From 2002 to 2008, she was the Global Thematic Leader for Ecosystem Management Tools for the Commission on Ecosystem Management of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Professor – University of Groningen

Linda’s research focuses on understanding factors influencing sustainable behavior, the effects and acceptability of strategies aimed to encourage sustainable behavior, and how and why acting sustainably affects wellbeing. She is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. She is laureate of the Dutch Royal Decoration with appointment as the Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion, and laureate of the Stevin prize of the Dutch Research Council.  She previously served as President of division ‘Environmental Psychology’ of the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP), member of the Advisory Group on Energy for Horizon 2020, member of the Supervisory Board of the University of Twente, and associated member of the Dutch Council for the Environment and Infrastructure. Also, she coordinated the European PERSON platform (see www.person.eu) that aims to unite and advise socio-economic research on the human dimensions of sustainable energy transitions aimed to promote a secure, clean and efficient energy system.

Research Associate, Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change-MIT & Senior Consultant – Saudi Aramco

Mustafa is currently a senior analysis and planning consultant with Saudi Aramco and a research associate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. Mustafa previously worked for MIT and the Arab Planning Institute. His Ph.D. is in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics from the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Research Scholar- International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis

Leila Niamir is a research scholar jointly associated with the Sustainable Service Systems and Transformative Institutional and Social Solutions research groups of the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program. She is a computational economist working on energy and climate change mitigation. Her research focus is on the science-policy-society interface, agent-based modeling, behavioral and lifestyle changes, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and wellbeing. Niamir received her doctoral degree from the University of Twente in The Netherlands in 2019 and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at MCC Berlin, Germany from 2019 to 2022.

Postdoctoral Researcher, at the Centre for South and South-East Asia Multidisciplinary Applied Research Network on Transforming Societies of Global South (SMARTS@SERD-AIT, Asian Institute of Technology)

Shreya Some is an economist by training. She did her M.A. in Economics (2015) and PhD (2021) from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. Her PhD thesis title was “Economics of Greenhouse Gas Emission Mitigation: A Study of the Indian Agricultural Sector” which tried to understand the ways in which non-CO2 GHG emissions can be reduced from Indian agriculture, the potential of reducing emissions and the associated costs and benefits using marginal abatement cost approach and sustainable development goals framework. During her PhD, she was an exchange scholar at the Technical University, Freiberg, Germany where she worked on Ancillary Benefits of Climate Policy Activities for Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), funded by the UGC-DAAD 2019-2021.

Her research interests include a wide range of topics: emission mitigation, energy modelling, just transition, gender equality and sustainable development. She is passionate about demand side climate mitigation, emission reduction from the food system, just transition of the food system. Her focus sectors are: agriculture, transport, urban and energy; and her focus regions are: South Asia and South East Asia. Her involvement in current projects includes zero carbon energy pathways for India.

Associate Dean, School of Environment and Sustainability; School of Systems and Infrastructure; Senior Lead Practice, Indian Institute for Human Settlements. 

Amir Bashir Bazaz is Senior Lead-Practice at IIHS. He has a PhD in Management from the  Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, with a specialization in Public Systems. He  has substantial experience of working with various integrated assessment frameworks  and modelling arrangements. His current research interests are low-carbon  societies/infrastructure, climate change mitigation and adaptation (across scales) with  specific focus on urban climate change linkages and climate, energy and environment  policy.

Amir he has been a Contributing Author to the IPCC Special Report on 1.5C (Chapter 4), is  Contributing Author to the Feasibility assessment in the AR6 cycle, has been a Lead  Author on the Summary for Urban Policy Makers (SUPM), and has been a Lead Author on  the Summary for Financial Decision Makers (SFDM). He was also the National Expert  Consultant to the Government of India, managing the production and submission of  India’s Second National Communication to the UNFCCC.

At IIHS, Amir had been the Regional Research Lead for a multi-partner, multi-year climate  adaptation research project — Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions (ASSAR). This  project was part of an IDRC/DFID funded global climate adaptation research programme  — Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA) operational  across West, South and East Africa as well as South Asia. In addition, Amir has been a part  of many practice-based engagements at IIHS, notably on ‘Energy Innovation’ in  partnership with Cambridge University; and ‘GCRF-PEAK program, focusing on  sustainable energy transitions in the Urban context’ in partnership with Oxford  University, Peking University, and the University of Cape Town and EAFIT University,  Colombia. He is the Lead Researcher for the Volkswagen Foundation funded multi-country, multi-year RESET project (Reconfiguring Sustainable Energy Transitions) that  tracks the energy transition in India, Germany, the Netherlands and South Africa. He also  manages the Disaster Risk & Resilience portfolio at IIHS.

Senior Fellow, Chicago Council of Global Affairs

Ian Klaus is a senior fellow on global cities and foreign policy at the Chicago Council on  Global Affairs. He also serves as director of research and policy for the Global Parliament  of Mayors and as the series editor of the AR6 Summary for Urban Policymakers. Previously, he served as a diplomatic adviser to the Urban 20 and C40 City Climate  Leadership Group.

He was senior adviser for global cities at the US Department of State. In that role, he led urban diplomacy for the United States, engaging dozens of foreign ministries and  development agencies from Africa, South America, North America, Asia, and Europe on  urbanization and foreign policy issues. He also internally managed the State  Department’s efforts to develop urbanization-related policies. Klaus was deputy United  States negotiator for the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable  Development. From 2011 – 2016, he served as member of the policy planning staff in the  office of the Secretary of State, advising the Secretary of State and Director of Policy  Planning. He has been a member of the World Economic Forum’s advisory board on the future of urban development, the Creative Cities Working Group at Stanford University, a  visiting fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Ernest May Fellow for History and  Security Studies at the Kennedy School of Government. He holds a Ph.D. in international  history from Harvard University, and is the author of Forging Capitalism (Yale, 2014) and Elvis is Titanic (Knopf, 2007).

Director, Indian Institute for Human Settlements

Aromar Revi is the founding Director of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS).  He is a global practice and thought leader, and educator with over 37 years of interdisciplinary experience in sustainable development, global environmental change, long-term futures, governance, public policy and finance, and urbanisation. Aromar is a global expert on Sustainable Development; Co-Chair of UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). He is a member of the Advisory Board of UCLG, the global voice of local and regional governments from 0.24 million towns, cities and regions.

Aromar is a leading expert on global environmental change, especially climate change.  He was a Coordinating Lead Author (CLA) of the 2018 IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C. He is a CLA of the synthesis chapter on Climate Resilient Development Pathways of the IPCC AR 6 on Adaptation, and a member of the AR6 Synthesis Report Core Writing Team. He was also a CLA of the 2018 SR1.5 Summary for Urban Policymakers, and the 2021 Summary for Financial Decisionmakers. He was earlier a CLA of the IPCC Assessment Report 5 on Urban Areas, that established the role of cities and regions in addressing climate risks in 2014.

He is one of South Asia’s most experienced risk and disaster management professionals and has been a member of the Advisory Board of UNDRR’ Scientific & Technical Advisory Group (STAG) and its bi-annual Global Assessment of Risk (GAR), from 2008. He has led the design for UNDRR of the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), a global partnership to promote the resilience of infrastructure systems to climate and disaster risks.

Senior Expert – European Commission

Paolo Bertoldi is a senior expert in sustainable energy, climate change and energy efficiency at the European Commission.
Some of his key areas of expertise include: Energy Service Companies, market based instruments, governance, environmental leadership, ICT energy consumption.

Experienced Editor In Chief with a demonstrated history of working in the international affairs industry. Bertoldi is also skilled in sustainable energy, Corporate Social Responsibility, International Relations, and data centre, and is in charge of policy analysis for energy efficiency at the European Commission where he has served as Energy Efficiency Expert and Senior Expert for a total of 26 years. He has an engineering degree focused in energy systems and electrical system from University of Padova, Italy.

Head of working group Land Use, Infrastructure and Transport – Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change

Prof. Dr. Felix Creutzig is head of the working group Land Use, Infrastructures and Transport and Chair of Sustainability Economics at Technische Universität Berlin. He was lead author of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report and lead analyst of the Global Energy Assessment. His research focuses on: Conceptualizing and quantifying GHG emissions of cities world-wide; Assessing opportunities for GHG mitigation of cities world-wide; Building models of sustainable urban form and transport; Land rents as a complement for financing sustainable infrastructures; Analyzing the role of capital stocks and infrastructures for climate change mitigation; Land use-mediated uncertainty in integrated assessments, particularly those related to bioenergy.

Before joining the MCC and TU Berlin, Felix was a postdoc fellow at the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley, collaborating with Dan Kammen, Lee Schipper and Elizabeth Deakin, and the Energy Foundation China in Beijing. Felix Creutzig received his PhD in Computational Neuroscience from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and holds a Master of Advanced Studies (Path III in Mathematics) from Cambridge University, UK. From 2009 until 2011 Felix was also chair of Netzwerk Europa, the Alumni organization of the Studienkolleg zu Berlin.