Climate change

In this podcast, Rowan Douglas of Willis Group insurers, assesses his industry’s response to extreme weather events.

http://www.scidev.net/global/climate-change/multimedia/q-a-climate-change-and-assessing-financial-risk.html

Q&A: Climate change and assessing financial risk

In this podcast, Anders Ladekarl of the Danish Red Cross says new methods are needed to explain climate change.

http://www.scidev.net/global/communication/multimedia/q-a-moving-beyond-climate-doomsday-narratives.html

Q&A: Moving beyond climate doomsday narratives

In this podcast, experts explain why higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may worsen malnutrition.

http://www.scidev.net/global/nutrition/multimedia/climate-change-may-increase-hidden-hunger.html

Climate change may increase ‘hidden hunger’

Lucia Grenna heads a World Bank unit that specialises in climate change-related communication. In 2011, she set up a communication initiative called Connect4Climate, which has grown into a major global partnership of organisations and individuals committed to climate change action. Her task, she says, is “to listen to and to engage unusual audiences” and to make people realise that the term “climate change’’ in itself does not have a message.

http://www.scidev.net/global/communication/multimedia/q-a-lucia-grenna-and-her-connect4climate-initiative.html

Q&A: Lucia Grenna and her Connect4Climate initiative

In lead to December’s 20th UN Conference of Parties on climate change, scientists and policymakers are reflecting on the future of climate science. Many are questioning whether the existing mechanisms that feed scientific evidence into international politics are working well enough.

In this interview Ilan Kelman argues that, despite its important work, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with its consensus-based approach, is no longer suited to the new challenges posed by climate change.

http://www.scidev.net/global/climate-change/multimedia/climate-science-beyond-the-ipcc.html


What’s next for climate science beyond the IPCC?

“I’m opening frontiers of research in an area where people don’t believe it’s possible to conduct research” says PhD student Anthony Egeru, who is studying the effects of climate change on forage resources in Karamoja, in northeast Uganda. 

Karamoja is a semi-arid plain largely populated by pastoralists. It is an area that has seen many years of armed conflict and unrest between armed pastoralists and the Ugandan army (UPDF), to the extent that Egeru has needed armed protection from the UPDF whilst conducting his research in Karamoja.  

Egeru argues that governments need to be more proactive in setting the research agenda, so that university academics do not remain in their “ivory towers” but instead begin answering some of the many developmental challenges faced by countries in Africa.  

Egeru, who is Ugandan, is studying for his PhD at the University of Nairobi, in Kenya. His studies were funded initially by seed grants from RUFORUM (the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture).
This is part of the Africa’s PhD Renaissance series funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York

http://www.scidev.net/global/education/multimedia/phds-focus-uganda-neglected-pastoralists.html 


PhDs in Focus: Helping Uganda's neglected pastoralists

SciDev.Net podcasts look at key global development issues and the ways in which science can have a positive impact on equitable and sustainable development and poverty reduction. 