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

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

Time:

• 9:30 am - 11:00 am, Thursday 25 September (Australian Eastern Time),

• 7:30 am - 9:00 am, Thursday 25 September (China Eastern Time),

• 4:30 pm - 6:00 pm, Wednesday 24 September (U.S. Pacific Time),

• 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm, Wednesday 24 September (U.S. East Coast Time)

Description

Locally led adaptation and resilience are widely discussed but understood and interpreted in different ways. 

The Australian Government says adaptation should be place-based, community-led and values driven, involving everyone and underpinned by science.  

The former Biden Administration, in its last National Adaptation Plan, said community-driven solutions were at the centre of its climate resilience strategy and essential to building a climate resilient nation. 

While its approach is different, the Trump Administration has maintained an emphasis on local community and state leadership on resilience arguing it is empowering states and local communities.

How is it working? What are the successes and shortcomings? Can a national strategy be built around local action? Do we need further institutional change?

In this roundtable we will hear from a range of people working at the frontline of locally led adaptation, trying to make it work or just trying to track what is going on.

Host

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

Speakers

Elissa Waters is a lecturer in Human Geography interested in the social and political dimensions of climate change adaptation and disaster governance in Australia and the Pacific. She is a chief investigator on the National Environmental Science Program Climate Systems Hub project Enabling Best Practice Adaptation in Australia. 

Amanda Mullan is the Extreme Weather Resilience Hub Coordinator and Project Director at the National Academy of Public Administration, an initiative of academy Fellows Mark and Jane Pisano. The Hub recognises place-based solutions are essential for local problems and it is intended to identify solutions that can be replicated.

Katrina Graham manages the Northern Tasmania Alliance for Resilient Councils that is set up to build capacity in local government for climate resilience by working collaboratively to increase capacity and capability of councils to understand and respond to increasing hazards and disasters regionally.

Liu Beibei is Professor of Environment Planning and Management at the School of the Environment, Nanjing University and Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins-Nanjing Centre. With a background of environmental system analysis and environmental policy analysis, she is working on resilience of agricultural and industrial systems.

Miles Murphy is senior research analyst with the Centre for Intergovernmental Partnerships at the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA)in Washington DC. He and colleagues at NAPA completed a report last October on financing strategies for local government to address local level climate impacts.

Professor Mark Pisano is co-chair of the NAPA Standing Panel on Intergovernmental Systems with a distinguished record of public service in regional planning, environment and infrastructure. With Rob Lempert, he developed the concept of Water and Climate Resilient Boundary Centres. He will provide an update on NAPA’s work on climate change adaptation.

Dr Emma Carmody is an international environmental lawyer and environmental entrepreneur with particular expertise in wetlands, freshwater and the intersection between human rights and water. In early 2022, Emma co-founded a for-purpose business called ‘Restore Blue’, the objective of which is to work with local communities to restore lost blue carbon wetlands at scale in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. She is a fellow of the Peter Cullen Water and Environment Trust, sits on the Strategic Advisory Council of the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation (AGWA) and is an affiliate of the Australian National University Water Justice Hub.

Dan Guttman is professor at the Tianjin University Law School, an adjunct professor at the Fudan University - London School of Economics Institute for Global Public Policy, and fellow of the New York University US-Asia Law Institute. He will summarise and facilitate audience questions.

Roundtable 7: Slow Burn - hidden costs of a warming world - Details to be released.

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.

Watch recordings of previous roundtables here.

Contact

greenlab@monash.edu

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