Keynote addresses at Special Symposium on Climate Change & Impact Assessment, 25-26 October, Aalborg, Denmark
25 October 2010
Professor Jacqueline McGlade became Executive Director of the European Environment Agency on June 1 2003. Prior to this she was Natural Environment Research Council Professorial Fellow in Environmental Informatics in the Mathematics Department of University College London where her main areas of research included spatial data analysis and informatics, expert systems, environmental technologies and the international politics of the environment and natural resources.
Previous appointments have included Director of the UK’s Centre for Coastal & Marine Sciences, Director of Theoretical Ecology at the Forschungszentrum Jülich Germany, Associate Professor at the Honda funded International Ecotchnology Research Centre, Senior Scientist in the Federal Government of Canada and in the USA, Adrian Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge and Professorships at Warwick University and Aachen. Professor McGlade has won various prizes including the Minerva Prize, the Swedish Jubileum Award and the Monito del Giardino Award. She also has Honorary degrees from Wales (Bangor) Kent and is a Fellow of the Linnean Society and the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacture & Commerce.
Professor McGlade has worked extensively in North America, south-east Asia and west Africa; she has published more than 100 research papers, written popular articles, presented and appeared in many radio and television programmes, including her own BBC series The Ocean Planet and Learning from Nature and more recently Our Arctic Challenge, a film about sport and tourism in Greenland and One Degree Matters, a film about the impacts of global warming and the solutions emerging around the world. She has given public lectures worldwide on climate change, energy and sustainable development, environmental information, conflicts over environmental impacts of industrial and natural activities, environmental technologies and the use of multimedia and modern forms of web communication.
Professor McGlade was Chairman of The Earth Centre and a Board Member of the Environment Agency. She is currently a Trustee of the Natural History Museum, and a member of the Environment Advisory Committee of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, UK-China Forum and UK-Japan 21st Century Group. She is also Director of the software company, View the World Ltd.
Recent books: Advanced Ecological Theory (Blackwell 1999); The Gulf of Guinea Large Marine Ecosystem (Elsevier 2002).
'The Changing Role of the Impact Assessment Practitioner' by Dr. Ross Marshall
Keynote abstract:
As a professional body of specialists have we got our focus right when seeking to act as a fulcrum between the climate science and its practice in situ, and between the scientific community and developers/plan makers and the wider stakeholder community.
Dr. Ross Marshall is Executive Manager within The Environment Agency, with responsibility for the National Environmental Assessment Service (NEAS). NEAS provides environmental leadership and technical support across a wide range of Agency functions, notably the £725 million/year capital infrastructure plans and programmes for Flood & Coastal Risk Management, Navigation, Fishery Conservation and Water Quality. The team comprising 70 project managers and technical specialists in environmental management & impact assessment, Town & Country Planning, Landscape Architecture, Heritage and Archaeology. NEAS is also heavily involved compensating for UK climate change losses on Natura sites through the creation of replacement coastal and riparian habitat.
The Environment Agency is Europe’s biggest Environmental Regulator and a lead UK authority on Climate Change management and the UK’s major producer of EIA/SEA Reports.
Ross Marshall was formerly President of the International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA) and a previous Board Member of IEMA. He is a visiting Senior Research Fellow at Strathclyde University’s David Livingstone Centre for Sustainability.
26 October 2010
'What hinders a more effective science-policy interface? Lessons from the climate change ongoing crisis' by Professor Viriato Soromenho-Marques
Keynote abstract:
There is no easy transition from science to policy making. Complexity of issues, plurality of actors, antagonistic agendas and the uncertainties in the social role and status of science are among the most visible -- although with deep hidden features -- obstacles to an effective science-policy interface. The case of climate change works like a kind of magnifying lens allowing us to exercise a more acute critical judgement upon the constellation of problems we may identify in this crucial area of public policy framing.
Viriato Soromenho-Marques (1957) teaches Political Philosophy and European Ideas in the Departments of Philosophy and European Studies of the University of Lisbon, where he is Full Professor. Since 1978 he has been engaged in the civic environmental movement in Portugal and Europe. He is member of the National Council on Environment and Sustainable Development (since 1998). He was Vice-Chair of the European Environmental and Sustainable Development Advisory Councils network (2001-2006). He was one of the authors of the Portuguese National Strategy for Sustainable Development (2004). Member of the Advisory Group on Energy and Climate Change from the EC President (since 2007). Scientific Coordinator of the Environment Program from Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (since 2007). Member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences (since 2008). More information regarding his bibliography and activities may be find on: www.viriatosoromenho-marques.com
Professor Nicholas Stern will provide a video address
Professor Lord Nicholas Stern, IG Patel Chair and Director, LSE Asia Research Centre; EOPP Associate. Professor Stern’s research and publications have focused on the economics of climate change, economic development and growth, economic theory, tax reform, public policy and the role of the state and economies in transition. First books were on tea in Kenya and the Green Revolution in India (where he lived for 8 months in a village in Northern India in 1974/75). Has written books on crime and the criminal statistics in the UK and a few on public finance and development. “Growth & Empowerment: Making Development Happen” was published in April 2005. The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change was published in October 2006 (http://www.sternreview.org.uk), and in printed form by Cambridge University Press in January 2007. He has published more than 15 books and 100 articles. “A Blueprint for a Safer Planet” was published by Random House in April 2009.