Description

The impacts of climate change will affect every sector of society, every community and household. Building our capacity to take actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lead us to a greener, more resilient and adaptive future is, or should be, an urgent priority. But this requires leadership.

Leadership in climate action requires an understanding of climate risk and resilience, climate justice, and the competencies necessary to design and implement strategic, just, collaborative, and holistic strategies to reduce climate related risks, vulnerabilities, and inequities.

What does it mean to be a climate action leader in the context of this urgent and escalating crisis? What leadership characteristics and orientations are needed to address the complexity of climate change (intersecting economic, social, cultural and political risks and impacts) and how can we proceed in ways that contribute to decolonization and social justice?

Moderated by Dr. Robin Cox, program head for the Graduate Diploma and Master of Arts in Climate Action Leadership programs at Royal Roads University, this interdisciplinary panel will explore the urgent need and opportunity for strategic, holistic and just climate action leadership.

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MEET OUR PANELISTS

Deborah Harford

Ewa Jackson is the Managing Director of ICLEI Canada, and is a leader in the field of climate adaptation and resilience. Since 2002 she has been engaging with communities from coast to coast to coast on the issue. Ewa works to help communities understand that collaborative approaches to adaptation planning that include a variety of perspectives and voices are necessary to move forward with the implementation of adaptive actions. She has worked with municipal governments for over 19 years in the fields of climate change, public participation, and communications. Ewa’s particular field of interest is in the area of collaborative climate action and specifically on building social resilience.

Adam Lerner is the Founder & Sustainability Assessments Lead of Solvable where he supports companies who have set bold, science-based sustainability targets to transform their internal cultures. After fifteen years as a marketing strategist with various design agencies, Lerner transitioned all his energies to mitigate the accelerating climate emergency. He is the co-founder of the Vancouver dinner series, Now What, and writes a bi-weekly Substack publication to build climate consciousness called The Understory. 

Roger Street has worked on climate, climate impacts and adaptation in Canada since the mid-1970s and internationally since moving to the UK in January 2006. Much of his work builds on his experience in leading and supporting national assessments in Canada, the USA, and the UK, and developing assessment processes internationally. Roger also plays a leading role in the UK and internationally on developing and presenting knowledge and evidence to inform assessments, planning and implementation in the context of adaptation and resilience. In particular, he has led and participated in changing evidence-based, strategic approaches to address climate change and disaster risk reduction and shifted the dialogue between researchers and decision-makers from focusing on climate information and evidence to focusing on supporting decisions – ‘decision-driven and science-informed’.