The Urban Futures Hub is pleased to announce the second installment of its Urban Futures Series. Join us for an insightful discussion featuring distinguished speakers Debra Roberts and Şiir Kılkış about the process leading to the scoping, outline agreement, and essential expectations related to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Climate Change and Cities. The session will be moderated by Leila Niamir.
This groundbreaking report, part of the IPCC’s Seventh Assessment Cycle (AR7), will commence with its First Authors' Meeting in March 2025 and is scheduled for completion by March 2027. The session will shed light on the critical roles of scientists, local governments, and practitioners in addressing climate change within urban contexts through the lenses of science and policy. The event will also feature engaging panel discussions exploring the science-policy interface around cities and the built environment.
If you are passionate about urban areas and the intersection of science and policy for transformative action in addressing climate change through mitigation and adaptation, don’t miss this event!
© IPCC/Bernd Lammel
Prof. Debra Roberts
Speakers
Prof. Debra Roberts,
IPCC AR6, Co-Chair, Working Group II
Prof. Debra Roberts is a scientist who has spent four decades working at the science-policy-practice interface at local and international levels. She headed the Sustainable and Resilient City Initiatives Unit and Environmental Planning and Climate Protection Department in eThekwini Municipality (Durban, South Africa) between 1994 and 2024. She was elected as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Co-Chair of Working Group II for the sixth assessment cycle (2015-2023). She has held several international advisory roles, for example, in the Global Commission on Adaptation; United Cities and Local Governments; ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability; the United Nations Secretary General’s Climate Summit; Global Commission for SDG Urban Finance; the WMO World Weather Research Programme; UN-Habitat and UNEP. She was also a lead negotiator for the South African delegation involved in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations. In 2019 and 2022/23 she was included in a list of the World’s 100 Most Influential People in Climate Policy. She is currently an Honorary Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in the School of Life Sciences and holds the Professor Willem Schermerhorn Chair in Open Science from a Majority World Perspective at the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation at the University of Twente. She is President of the AXA Research Fund Scientific Board and Chair of the Board of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre. Professor Roberts will be a Co-ordinating Lead Author for the IPCC’s upcoming Special Report on Climate Change and Cities.
© IPCC
Prof. Şiir Kılkış
Prof. Şiir Kılkış
IPCC AR7, Vice-Chair, Working Group III
Şiir Kılkış serves as Vice-Chair of IPCC’s Working Group III on mitigation since her election in July 2023. She served as a Lead Author of the Working Group III contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report, focusing on mitigation options, urban systems, and sustainable development linkages, and undertook responsibilities in multiple cross-chapter and cross-Working Group collaborations. She has over two decades of experience in climate change mitigation, including its role in pursuing sustainable development.
She is senior researcher and science adviser at The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye and is double affiliated to the Middle East Technical University in Ankara as professor. Her research focuses on the mitigation potential of urban areas, supply-demand interactions, global and local scales, and sustainable development. She received her doctorate from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Civil and Architectural Engineering and Bachelor of Science from Georgetown University in Science, Technology and International Affairs where she holds a gold medal in her field. Alongside international awards, she received a high-level fellowship for her research centered on climate change mitigation and urbanization awarded at the Centennial Year of the Republic of Türkiye. Through her publications, she takes place among the top 2% of scientists in energy, environmental sciences, and enabling/strategic technologies. She served on the Scientific Steering Committee of the Scoping Meeting of the Special Report on Climate Change and Cities and is a member of the Gender Action Team. Most recently, she has been selected to serve the responsibilities of a Review Editor within the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Cities.
© Silveri | IIASA
Leila Niamir
Moderator:
Dr. Leila Niamir,
Lead of IIASA Urban Futures Hub
Dr. Leila Niamir is a research scholar and the lead of the Urban Futures Hub at the Energy, Climate, and Environment Program of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria. She is a computational economist working on energy demand and climate change. Her research focuses on cities and the built environment, behavioral and lifestyle changes, human wellbeing, and agent-based modeling. Dr. Niamir has been appointed as a Lead Author for the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Cities.
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