Technical & networking sessions slot 2

The Earth Institute, Columbia University; CIFOR

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As countries embraced in mitigation and adaptation initiatives, policy interest in research on vulnerability to climate change has increased. Although, evidence-based information on socio-environmental vulnerability to climate change is critical for recommending mitigation and adaptation policies and interventions, studies on how vulnerable societies, environments and ecosystems are adapting are still uncommon in most countries. While scenarios on long-term impacts of climate change have been useful for raising awareness, they also have created the impression that climate change is in the distant future and is not the immediate concern of policy makers or land managers.

Scarcity of information on socio-environmental and bio-ecological processes of mitigation and adaptation to climate change and the temporal mismatch between climate information and decision making cycles is limiting many countries to move from policies of awareness to policies of interventions. Such limitations are clearly expressed by the failure of governments to integrate environmental and biodiversity protection mechanisms, land and resource use planning, settlement planning and other important socio-environmental sectors in their mitigation and adaptation polices and programs.

CIFOR-Earth Institute partnership proposes to organize a discussion forum on evidence based climate information for mitigation and adaptation. We will convene a panel of experts to address both the issues of knowledge gaps on socio-environmental vulnerability to climate change and to propose a research framework that can help to generate science-based information for policy makers.

Speakers

• Ruth De Fries

  Denning Professor of Sustainable Development; Professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology, The Earth Institute, Columbia University

• Romano Kiome

  Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture of Kenya

• Shahid Naeem

  Director of Science, Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC)

• Walter Baethgen

  Director, Regional and Sectorial Research Program, International Research Institute for Climate and Society, The Earth Institute

• Gabriel Quijandria

  Vice Minister of Environment, Peru

Moderator

• Bruce Campbell

  Director of the CGIAR Research Programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS)

Rapporteur

• Louis Verchot

  Research director of Forests and Environment at the Center for International Forestry Research