Governing Climate: interconnections between science and policy, north and south, public and private in the response to climate change

Professor Diana Liverman, University of Arizona

Diana Liverman is the co-director of the Institute of the Environment at The University of Arizona and a professor in the School of Geography and Development. She maintains an affiliation with Oxford University where she is a visiting professor of Environmental Policy and Development in the School of Geography and Environment, a fellow of Linacre College, and a fellow in the Environmental Change Institute.  Her degrees are from University College London (BA), University of Toronto (MA) and UCLA (PhD).

Her main research interests focus on climate impacts, vulnerability and adaptation, and climate policy and mitigation, especially in the developing world. She also works on the political economy and political ecology of environmental management in the Americas, especially in Mexico.  In 2010 she was awarded the Founders Gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society for her contributions to understanding the human dimensions of environmental change.  Recent publications include work on carbon offsets, food security, and climate adaptation.

Currently she is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on America's Climate Choices which is advising the US government on responses to climate change. She has been an active member of national and international advisory committees on global change including the US NAS Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change and the Inter American Institute (IAI) for Global Change Research. She is currently the chair of the scientific advisory committee international Global Environmental Change and Food Systems (GECAFS) program and editor of the Annual Review of Environment and Resources.   She collaborates with several arts and cultural organizations interested in climate change as well as Oxfam.

Governing Climate

Climate change presents great risks to livelihoods and landscapes across the world yet we have been unable to organize our research, policies or personal lives to design effective responses.  This lecture will discuss some of the complex and controversial underpinnings of contemporary climate policies, including the roles of scientific analysis and evidence, environmental justice, and non nation state actors in the design and implementation of carbon offsetting and climate adaptation.