Professor Prasad Presents on Living Through Extremes: Building Livelihood Resilience Across Sectors and Countries

Thursday, December 4, 2014 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM EST
6th Floor Flom Auditorium, Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, One Woodrow Wilson Plaza 1300 Pennsylvania, Ave., NW Washington, D.C. 20004 Phone: 202.691.4000

In the most climate-change vulnerable regions of our planet, the impacts of extreme weather events threaten lives and livelihoods. The most affected regions include deltas, small islands, and exposed coastal regions, as well as arid and semiarid lands and areas affected by glacier and permafrost melt. People on the front-lines of these changes will in many cases face aggravated baseline risks and both extreme and slow-onset effects, including coastal inundation, catastrophic floods, and extended drought conditions.

These stresses have the potential to render spaces effectively unproductive and uninhabitable. A central question for practice, policy, and research revolves around the resilience of peoples whose livelihoods and settlements are threatened by these overwhelming extremes.

This session will include brief discussions by six members of the Global Resilience Academy, supported by the UN University and Munich Re Foundation, on how they are working to provide a platform for connecting communities of expertise and creating concepts to foster resilience. The challenges and opportunities they are addressing include large-scale migration, community managed sustainable agriculture, and access to voluntary family planning services.

Speakers

Robin Bronen
Senior Research Scientist, Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska, Fairbanks; Executive Director, Alaska Institute for Justice

David Lewis
Professor, London School of Economics

Clive Mutunga
Family Planning and Environment Technical Advisor, USAID

Vivek Prasad
Department of Environmental Science and Policy, George Mason University

Ashiqur Rahman
School of Anthropology, The University of Arizona

Moderator

Roger-Mark De Souza
Director of Population, Environmental Security and Resilience, Wilson Center

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