The 2012 National Climate Change Adaptation conference has wrapped up in Melbourne, covering issues such as preventing food and water shortages, managing more intense natural disasters and their economic fallout and avoiding climate-driven extinctions.

 

Hosted jointly by the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF) and CSIRO’s Climate Adaptation Flagship (CAF) the conference has urged a more concentrated agenda on tacking a range of issues that have become more urgent since the previous conference in 2010.

 

“Decision makers in government, business and the community are faced with making choices now that will determine how successfully we manage the impacts of climate change in the future. These issues have become more urgent since the previous conference,” NCCARF Director, Professor Jean Palutikof said.

 

Speakers at the conference included:

  • Francis Zwiers, Director, Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium, University of Victoria, Canada.
  • Tony McMichael, National Centre for Environmental and Population Health, Australian National University.
  • Mark Howden, Chief Research Scientist, CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences.
  • Kristie L. Ebi, Executive Director of the Technical Support Unit for IPCC Working Group II.
  • Peter Cosier, Director and Founding Member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.
  • Mark Rogers, Asset Manager, Infrastructure Investment at Colonial First State Global Asset Management.
  • Hugh Possingham, Director, ARC centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions and the National Environmental Research Program Environmental Decisions Hub.