Conference Kleinman Center Event

Financing Urban Adaptation to Address Climate Change

Virtual event

Join Penn IUR, Perry World House, and Kleinman Center for Energy Policy for a two-day virtual meeting on urban adaptation to climate change.

Event Summary

Join Penn IUR, Perry World House, and the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy for a two-day virtual meeting on urban adaptation to climate change. A series of expert panels will highlight the implementation and financing of subnational programs and projects designed to adapt to such global warming-induced hazards that threaten urban lives and livelihoods as rising sea levels and storm surges, heat stress, extreme precipitation, inland and coastal flooding, landslides, drought, increased aridity, water scarcity, wildfires, and air pollution.

Jeffrey Sachs, University Professor and Director, Center for Sustainable Development, Columbia University will offer a keynote address on the challenges and opportunities of urban adaptation finance. The eight panels that follow include speakers from the public, private and non-governmental sectors, including Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, Mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone; Alice Charles, Lead Author, Cities, Infrastructure and Urban Services, World Economic Forum; David Dodman, Lead author, Chapter 6 IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Director, Human Settlements, International Institute for Environment and Development; Hazem Galal, Global Leader for Cities and Local Government, PwC-Middle East; Kate Gallego, Mayor of Phoenix, Arizona; Jerome Jean Haegeli, Group Chief Economist, Swiss Re Institute; Claudio Orrego, Governor, Metropolitan Region of Santiago de Chile; Aromar Revi, Director, Indian Institute for Human Settlements; Sameh Wahba, Global Director, Urban, Disaster Risk Management, Resilience and Land Global Practice, World Bank; Mark Watts, Executive Director, C40 Cities; and Elizabeth Yee, Executive Vice President, Program Strategy and Chief of Staff, Rockefeller Foundation. Maimunah Mohd Sharif, UN Undersecretary and Executive Director, UN Habitat will offer a greeting and Dr. Poldergeist—an invention of Simon Richter, Professor of German and Department Chair, Germanic Languages and Literatures, Penn School of Arts & Sciences-—to publicize the topic, will stop in for a visit.