Professor Carmin was an internationally-renowned scholar of the institutional and societal dimensions of environmental governance. Her research focused on urban climate adaptation with particular attention to the question of why cities pursue climate adaptation planning, how adaptation activities are mainstreamed, and in what ways do local governments address the needs of the most vulnerable populations in their decisions and implementation activities. She published four books, as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters, on research conducted in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the United States. Professor Carmin served on multiple editorial boards and a variety of national and international climate adaptation steering committees and advisory boards. She was a Lead Author for the urban chapter of the US National Climate Assessment and the Working Group II contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

To learn more about Professor Carmin's research and scholarship, visit her academic website.

Welcome

Eran Ben-Joseph is a Professor and Head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research and teaching areas include urban and physical design, standards and regulations, sustainable site planning technologies and urban retrofitting. He authored and co-authored the books: Streets and the Shaping of Towns and Cities, Regulating Place: Standards and the Shaping of Urban America, The Code of the City, RENEW Town and ReThinking a Lot. Eran has worked as a city planner, urban designer and landscape architect in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the United States. He holds degrees from Chiba National University of Japan (MS) and the University of California at Berkeley (PhD).

Remembering JoAnn

Cheryl Carmin is Professor and Director of Clinical Psychology Training at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center. She specializes in cognitive behavior therapy and the treatment of anxiety disorders, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, social anxiety, panic, worry, trauma, and phobias. She is the author of the book Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Demystified, and co-author of Dying of Embarrassment: Help for Social Anxiety and Phobia. She received her PhD in psychology from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. She is JoAnn’s older sister.

Richard (“Pete”) Andrews is Professor of Environmental Policy in the Department of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina’s (UNC) College of Arts and Sciences. He holds joint appointments in the Department of City and Regional Planning and in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering of the Gillings School of Global Public Health, the Curriculum for the Environment and Ecology, and the Carolina Institute for the Environment. His research and teaching are on environmental policy in the United States and worldwide, including the Czech Republic and Thailand. He is author of the book Managing the Environment, Managing Ourselves: A History of American Environmental Policy. He holds degrees from Yale University (BA) and the University of North Carolina’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning (MCRP, PhD). He advised JoAnn’s doctoral thesis at UNC.

Stacy VanDeveer is Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Political Science Department at the University of New Hampshire. His teaching and research interests include international environmental policymaking and its domestic impacts, comparative environmental politics, connections between environmental and security issues, the roles of expertise in policy making, and the global politics of consumption and environmental and humanitarian degradation. The author of numerous articles, book chapters, and reports, Stacy collaborated with JoAnn on research investigating environmental policy reform in Central and Eastern Europe. They co-edited the 2005 book, EU Enlargement and the Environment.

Debra Roberts is the Deputy Head of Environmental Planning and Climate Protection Department of eThekwini Municipality, Durban, South Africa. Her key responsibilities in this post include overseeing the planning and protection of the city’s biodiversity and natural resource base, directing and developing the municipality’s Climate Protection Programme, and ensuring that biodiversity and climate change considerations influence all aspects of planning and development in the city. She served on the IPCC Working Group II with JoAnn, and together with Isabelle Anguelovski they co-authored the 2012 article “Urban Climate Adaptation in the Global South: Planning in an Emerging Policy Domain”. She has a PhD in Urban Ecology and Biogeography from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (formerly known as the University of Natal). 

Carmin School of Climate Adaptation

Isabelle Anguelovski is a PI and Senior Researcher at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Her recent research analyzed environmental mobilization and revitalization in low-income and minority neighborhoods across political systems and contexts of urbanization (Barcelona, Boston, and Havana). Her newest project examines environmental gentrification trends and conflicts in cities in Europe and North America. In parallel, Isabelle has collaborated on research projects on urban climate adaptation planning and examined variations in planning approaches across cities, especially Durban (South Africa) and Quito (Ecuador). She authored the 2014 book Neighborhood as Refuge: Community Reconstruction, Place-Remaking, and Environmental Justice in the City. JoAnn chaired her Ph.D. committee at MIT and was a frequent research collaborator.

Panel 1: The Politics of Urban Adaptation

Alex Aylett is Assistant Professor in the program of Urbanization, Culture, and Society at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS), Canada. His research examines urban sustainability and systemic change in Canada, the United States, Europe and Africa. Since 2010, he has served as the Research Director of Sustainable Cities International, a nonprofit based in Vancouver. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia. From 2012- 2014, Alex was a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT, where he worked with JoAnn on research investigating urban climate response strategies.

Carl Spector is the Director of Climate and Environmental Planning for the City of Boston, where he coordinates climate mitigation and adaptation policies. Before joining City Hall, he worked on a wide variety of environmental and energy issues at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. General Accounting Office, the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, and in private industry. He holds degrees in physics and environmental science from Princeton University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. JoAnn worked with Carl to research Boston’s adaptation progress, and advised the city’s strategies.

David Dodman is Co-Head of the Human Settlements Group and Senior Researcher in the Climate Change Group at the International Institute for Environment and Development in London. David’s expertise lies in urban governance, climate change and urbanization, and community-based environmental management. His current research is on identifying appropriate urban adaptations to climate change and developing climate change risk and vulnerability maps in 15 cities. He has degrees from the University of St. Andrews (BSc) and the School of Geography and the Environment from the University of Oxford (PhD). David and JoAnn collaborated on climate adaptation research, served on the IPCC Working Group II, and co-authored several articles and reports together.

Stephen Hammer is Lead Urban Specialist in Cities and Climate Change at the World Bank. He specializes in energy, environmental, and climate change topics, viewed from a city perspective. As part of his work, he has been deeply involved in the development of the Bank's new Low Carbon, Livable Cities (LC2) initiative, which was launched in September 2013. Prior to joining the World Bank, he was recruited by JoAnn to Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT, where he taught courses on a variety of energy policy topics. He holds degrees from the London School of Economics (PhD), Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (MPP), and the University of California at Davis (BS).

Panel 2: Institutionalizing Adaptation: Opportunities for Social Justice

Lawrence Vale is Ford Professor of Urban Design and Planning at MIT, where he served as Head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning from 2002 until January 2009. He has taught in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning since 1988, and he is currently the director of the Resilient Cities Housing Initiative (RCHI), a unit of the School’s Center for Advanced Urbanism. Vale holds degrees from Amherst College (B.A. in American Studies, summa cum laude), M.I.T. (S.M.Arch.S.), and the University of Oxford (D.Phil.), which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar. He is the author or editor of nine books examining urban design, housing and planning. Larry and JoAnn collaborated on issues of resilient cities and justice at DUSP.

Jeff Hebert is the Executive Director of the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority. Prior to joining NORA, he served as the first-ever Director of Blight Policy and Neighborhood Revitalization for the City of New Orleans. In the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, he served as the Director of Community Planning for the Louisiana Recovery Authority, coordinating planning activities across affected areas and creating the Long Term Community Recovery program for the distribution of disaster CDBG funds. Prior to moving back to his home state after the Hurricanes, he worked in community redevelopment in New York City and Philadelphia. He holds degrees from New York University (BA in Urban Design and Architecture Studies) and MIT (MCP).

William Solecki is Professor and Director of the City University of New York’s Institute for Sustainable Cities. His research focuses on urban environmental change, and urban spatial development. He has served on several U.S. National Research Councils committees including the Special Committee on Problems in the Environment. He currently is a member of the International Geographical Union Megacity Study Group and the International Human Dimensions Programme, Urbanization and Global Environmental Change (UGEC) Scientific Steering Committee, through which he worked closely with JoAnn. He also serves as the co-leader of several climate impact studies in the greater New York and New Jersey region, including Mayor Bloomberg’s Climate Change Panel. He holds in degrees in Geography from Columbia University (BA) and Rutgers University (MA, PhD).

Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio is Senior Associate Director of The Rockefeller Foundation, where she helps develop initiatives regarding building resilience for climate change, and on oceans and fisheries conservation. Prior to joining the Foundation, she was a post-doctoral fellow conducting research on sustainable development at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. She also conducted policy research for the United Nations Environmental Program, the U.S. Department of State, and other institutions. She was a recipient of the 1996 National Harry S. Truman Scholarship for Public Service and a Mass Media Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement Science. She holds degrees from Columbia University (BA) and the University of Colorado (PhD in Ecology). Cristina and JoAnn collaborated on organizing and leading the “Learning Among Urban Leaders: Peer Exchange on Adaptation to Climate Change,” hosted by the Rockefeller Foundation in 2011.

Working Group Facilitators

Karen Seto is Professor of Geography and Urbanization, and the Associate Dean of Research at the Yale School of Forestry. A geographer by training, her research integrates remote sensing, field interviews, and modeling methods to study land change and urbanization, forecast urban growth, and examine the environmental consequences of urban expansion, particularly in Asia. She is co-chair of Urbanization and Global Environmental Change Project, on which she worked with JoAnn, a coordinating lead author of the IPCC Working Group III report, and serves on numerous National Research Council Committees. She is a recipient of a NASA New Investigator Program Award, a NSF Career Award, and a National Geographic Research Grant, and was named an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow in 2009. She holds degrees from the University of California, Santa Barbara (BA) and Boston University (MA, PhD).

Eran Ben-Joseph (see above)

Lawrence Susskind is Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. He is also the Vice Chair of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, Director of the Science Impact Collaborative, and Founder and Chief Knowledge Officer of the Consensus Building Institute. His research interests focus on the theory and practice of negotiation and dispute resolution, the practice of public engagement in local decision-making, global environmental treaty-making, climate change adaptation, and the land claims of Indigenous Peoples. Professor Susskind is the author or co-author of fifteen books, leads the New England Climate Adaptation Project, and the MIT-Malaysia Sustainable Cities Collaborative. He holds degrees from Columbia (BA) and MIT (MCP, PhD).

Timmons Roberts is Ittleson Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology at Brown University. He is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a co-founder of AidData.org, which aims to increase the transparency of climate and development finance. He is the co-author and editor of eight books and edited volumes, and of over seventy articles and book chapters. His current research focuses on climate change and international development, in particular how inequality affects our ability to address this complex global problem. He holds degrees from Kenyon College (BA in Biology) and Johns Hopkins University (PhD in Sociology). Timmons and JoAnn participated in the American Sociological Association’s Environment and Technology section together, and co-authored with Tom Rudel the article “The Political Economy of the Environment” in the 2011 Annual Review of Sociology.

Concluding Remarks

Ian Noble is advisor to the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index. He recently retired from the World Bank as the Lead Climate Change Specialist with particular responsibility for the Bank’s activities in adaptation to climate change. For 27 years, he was a Professor of Global Change Research at Australian National University. He has held senior roles in the IPCC process, including as a lead author of the IPCC chapter on adaptation that JoAnn contributed to, and in international cooperative research on climate change as part of the International Geosphere Biosphere Program. He was elected as Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (1999) and has received the Australian Centenary Medal for Services to Ecology (2001). An ecologist by training, he holds a Ph.D. from the University of Adelaide, and his research interests cover animal behavior, vegetation and biodiversity management, ecosystem modeling, expert systems and the science-policy interface.

Location

The symposium will take place in Room 155 (ground floor) of the Stata Center (Building 32) located at 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA. Visitor parking is available at the corner of Vassar Street and Massachusetts Avenue, and at 7 Cambridge Center on the corner of Ames Street and Main Street. The closest T-stop is Kendall Square.

Hotel

Rooms for speakers and presenters have been reserved at the Kendall Hotel, located at 350 Main Street, Cambridge, by the Kendall Square T-stop.

Rooms for participants have been blocked at the Boston Marriott Cambridge Hotel for the nights of December 4 and 5. To reserve a room, call Marriott Central Reservations at 1-800-228-9290 or use the link below no later than Thursday, November 13, 2014 to receive the discounted rate. Please indicate that you are attending the MIT Climate Change event when making your reservation. The hotel has an entrance at 50 Broadway Street, as well as an entrance on Main Street by the Kendall T-stop.

MIT Climate Change Room Block
Boston Marriott, Cambridge
219.00 USD per night
Start date: 12/4/14;  End date: 12/6/14; Last day to book by: 11/13/14
Book your group rate

Introduction & Remembrances

Carmin School of Urban Climate Adaptation

Panel 1: Urban Politics of Climate Adaptation

Panel 2: Opportunities for Equity in Urban Climate Adaptation