Protecting People and Planet

The climate is already changing and it will continue to change even as we reduce emissions. Goal 2 of COP26 focuses on how we can adapt to protect communities and natural habitats.

Join us as we talk to a series of experts about how we can mitigate against some of the effects of climate change. Through building defences and warning systems, supporting resilient infrastructure and agriculture, protecting and restoring ecosystems, and supporting communities already impacted by the climate crisis.

Our host

Professor Patrick Devine-Wright is a Professor in Human Geography at the University of Exeter. He has been ranked in the world’s top 1% of social science scholars in 2019 and 2020 (Web of Science). With expertise spanning Human Geography and Environmental Psychology, he conducts theoretically-driven research with real-world implications, often in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary settings. Across local, regional, national and international contexts, he is engaged in efforts to ensure social science insights inform decision making on a range of environmental challenges, notably climate change. He is a Lead Author for the IPCC Working Group III in the 6th Assessment Round contributing to a chapter on ‘Demand, Services and Social Aspects of Mitigation’. Patrick is Chair of the Devon Net Zero Climate Emergency Task Force and a non-executive Director of Exeter Community Energy. He contributes to the International Energy Agency’s Task 28 on Social Acceptance of Wind Energy and has been a member of the National Advisory Group for EirGrid (the Irish electricity grid operator) since 2013. He is a member of the Peer Review Group for the Department for Business, Enterprise and Industrial Strategy; and was formerly a member of the Social Science Expert Panel advising Defra and DECC. Patrick was an invited member of the National Advisory Group steering the UK Community Renewables Initiative between 2001 and 2006; and acted as Lead Expert to the Office of Science and Technology’s Foresight Project on Sustainable Energy and the Built Environment (2008).

Our guests

Dr Ricardo Safra de Campos is a Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Exeter. He is a population geographer working on the spatial mobility dimensions of human interaction with environmental change, with a focus on migration, sustainability and subjective wellbeing. He has collaborated with leading social, environmental and economic scientists across several competitively funded international research projects. His work has been published in interdisciplinary journals including Nature Climate Change, Global Environmental Change, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, and discipline-specific such as Population, Space and Place. He is a contributing author on Chapter 4: Sea Level Rise and Implications for Low-Lying Islands, Coasts and Communities of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. Ricardo gave expert oral evidence on migration and climate change to EU Home Affairs Sub-Committee of the UK’s House of Lords in 2020. He serves on the advisory board of international research and policy initiatives on climate-related displacement in Africa (Shaping the Future of Mobility in Africa, under the auspices of UNDP and the World Bank) and Asia (Bangladesh’s Action Plan for the implementation of National Strategy on Internal Displacement). Ricardo is on the editorial board for the journals Climatic Change, Springer; and PLOSClimate, PLOS. He is also a member of the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) Steering Group at the University of Exeter.

Dr Duncan MacFadyen is Head of Research & Conservation at Oppenheimer Generations in South Africa. He has a national diploma, bachelors and master’s degree in nature conservation from Tshwane University of Technology, and a masters and doctorate degree in zoology from the University of Pretoria. He is a director of Tswalu Kalahari Reserve Limited and Debshan (Pvt) Ltd. Duncan’s interest include conservation, resource ecology, zoology and entomology.

Jo Emberson-Wines is a Flood Defence Project Manager at the Environment Agency.

Dr Matt Eames is a Senior Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering and Senior Tutor for Engineering at the University of Exeter. His research focuses on energy use of the built environment and thermal comfort within buildings. Matt’s work has created weather files which provide the opportunity to evaluate the impact of varying climate change scenarios on building design performance throughout its life-cycle. This work is widely used by academics and industry to see how buildings will cope with the weather of the future and has had significant economic impact through use in more than £3bn worth of infrastructure projects. Matt is also now working on new research for Vistry, one of the UK’s largest housebuilders, to help determine how house construction needs to change to mitigate against the impacts of climate change.

Dr Tara Quinn is an environmental researcher and social scientist at Maynooth University in the Republic of Ireland. Tara works predominantly on issues of health, wellbeing, risk perception and senses of place in the context of environmental change. She is currently working with Professor Conor Murphy on the five year Assessment Report on Climate Change in Ireland (5YAR), collaborating on  the third volume on adaptation and impacts. She also works for the University of Exeter on a Wellcome Trust funded project on the health and wellbeing impacts of climate change adaptation. This project explores how populations respond to the implementation of infrastructure, catchment management and forced relocation as a response to climate risk and works in sites in Ireland, England and Ghana. Tara is co-leading an international webinar series with Exeter’s Professor Patrick Devine-Wright and Vanessa Masterson from the Stockholm Resilience Centre for the year 2021-22 on ‘21st century transitions and senses of place’.

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