Living with 2°C Plus – The Climate Change Adaptation Challenge Roundtable Series

Living in a world of more than 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures will present a host of challenges to water, food, health, infrastructure, ecosystems, social equity, cultural heritage and more. All of these impacts will have costs. Current indications are that we are heading for at least a 2.5°C warmer world. 

The Monash Green Lab roundtables, held in collaboration with the U.S. National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), will bring together leading international and Australian thinkers from government, business and community sectors.

Roundtable 7: Slow Burn - the hidden costs of a warming planet

Time

• 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm, Thursday 11 December (Sydney/Melbourne Time),

• 9:00 am - 10:00 am, Thursday 11 December (Shanghai Time),

• 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm, Wednesday 10 December (U.S. Pacific Time),

• 8:00 pm - 9:00 pm, Wednesday 10 December (U.S. East Coast Time)

Description

Not all impacts of climate change are dramatic or catastrophic, some are slow moving, almost invisible. These impacts don’t often grab headlines, but their consequences may be much more harmful than commonly realised. In his book, Slow Burn, the hidden costs of a warming world (Princeton, 2024), R. Jisung Park argues subtle setbacks of a warming world present major challenges; health risks spread across billions of people, cents off corporate profitability, agricultural livelihoods, young people learning, old people remembering and more people arguing. These impacts will not be equitable but concentrated among those most vulnerable. 

Speaker

R. Jisung Park is an economist who earned his undergraduate degree at Columbia University, his masters at Oxford and his PhD at Harvard, Jisung has pieced together a comprehensive narrative of these slow-moving impacts from his own research and an extensive survey of global research. His approach is careful methodical analysis rather bellicose catastrophising. 

Jisung will be joined by a panel of practitioners working in the field to draw out the lessons and learning for policy and implementation.

Discussants

Professor Anne Poelina is a Nyikina Warrwa woman from the Kimberley region of Western Australia. She is an active community leader, human and earth rights advocate, film maker and respected academic researcher, with a second Doctor of Philosophy (First Law) titled, ‘Martuwarra First Law Multi-Species Justice Declaration of Interdependence: Wellbeing of Land, Living Waters, and Indigenous Australian People’ (Nulungu Institute of Research, University of Notre Dame, Broome, Western Australia).

Anne, winner of the 2024 Geoethics Medal is also the Murray Darling Basin (MDB) inaugural First Nations appointment to its independent Advisory Committee on Social, Economic and Environmental Sciences (2022), and member of Institute for Water Futures, Australian National University, Canberra. Poelina was awarded the Kailisa Budevi Earth and Environment Award, International Women’s Day (2022) recognition of her global standing. Poelina is also an Ambassador for the Western Australian State Natural Rangelands Management (NRM) (2022).

Carole Hammond is a 30+ year local government professional, and current Executive Officer of the Goulburn Murray Climate Alliance, one of eight local government and agency Alliances that cover most of Victoria’s local government areas and have been addressing climate mitigation and adaptation at scale for over 20 years. Carole has Master’s degrees in environment, heritage, and urban planning, and another degree in commercial photography, and often ponders how this haphazard quest for knowledge led her to be working in such a fulfilling and consequential role leading GMCA.

Hosts

Dr Michael Spencer, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, Green Lab, Impact Labs, Monash Business School. 

Professor Daniel Guttman, Co-chair, Standing Panel on International Affairs, National Academy of Public Administration.

Watch recordings of previous roundtables here.

Roundtable 1: Where are we, why are we here and where do we want to go?

This webinar was held on Thursday 28 November 2024.

Roundtable 2: Extreme weather events, flood risk and stormwater systems

This webinar was held on Thursday 13 February 2025.

Roundtable 3: Managing risk, value and insurance protection
This webinar was held on Friday 14 March 2025.

Roundtable 4: Learning from wildfire: Do institutions constrain our ability to manage risk reduction and recovery?

This webinar was held on Thursday, 26 June 2025.

Roundtable 5: New perspectives on financing the adaptation challenge

This webinar was held on Thursday, 31 July 2025.

Roundtable 6: Locally led adaptation; building on place-based approaches to adaptation

This webinar was held on Thursday, 25 September 2025.

Contact

greenlab@monash.edu

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