Events
Leaders and activists around the world have encouraged governments to pursue a “green recovery” strategy in alleviating the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, in order to tackle longer-term existential threats to humanity and life on the planet.
So far, however, the global discussion of a green recovery has been more bark than bite. How can activists, policymakers, and scholars give teeth to the idea of a green recovery and ensure that such plans are truly global and inclusive? If practical, actionable steps towards a greener post-COVID world can be articulated clearly now, the world may be able to pivot towards more sustainable practices, but doing so may require asking uncomfortable questions about returning to business-as-usual.
Join Perry World House and the UNFCCC Nairobi Work Programme for this virtual edition of The World Today to discuss the idea of a global green recovery and its implementation with Billy Fleming and Musonda Mumba, moderated by LaShawn Jefferson and Koko Warner.
Sign up for this event, and details of how to take part can be found in your order confirmation email.
SPEAKERS
Billy Fleming is the Wilks Family Director of the Ian L. McHarg Center in the Weitzman School of Design and a senior fellow with Data for Progress. His fellowship with Data for Progress has focused on the built environment impacts of climate change, and resulted most prominently in the publication of low-carbon public housing policy briefs tied to the “Green New Deal for Public Housing Act” introduced in 2019. In his role at the McHarg Center, Fleming is co-editor of the forthcoming book An Adaptation Blueprint, co-editor and co-curator of the book and exhibit Design With Nature Now, and author of the forthcoming Drowning America: The Nature and Politics of Adaptation. Fleming is also the lead author of the recently published and widely acclaimed The 2100 Project: An Atlas for the Green New Deal. He is also a co-author of the Indivisible Guide (2016). Prior to joining Penn, he worked as a landscape architect, city planner, organizer, and, later, in the Obama Administration’s White House Domestic Policy Council. He holds a bachelor of landscape architecture (University of Arkansas), master of community and regional planning (University of Texas), and a doctorate of city and regional planning (University of Pennsylvania).
Musonda Mumba is the new Chief of the Terrestrial Ecosystems Unit since 1 June 2018. She joined UN Environment in October 2008, as a programme officer in Climate Change Adaptation Unit based in Nairobi, requested to lead the work on the development of the Global Adaptation Network (GAN) and also develop new proposals for the unit. She eventually secured resources to lead and coordinate the Ecosystems based Adaptation (EbA) Mountain Programme, a programmatic alliance with UN Environment, IUCN and UNDP (2011 – 2016) working in Peru, Nepal and Uganda. She has also been UN Environment’s focal point on mountains. She has over 20 years experience working at both scientific and political levels on climate change adaptation, conservation, protected areas management and wetlands ecology. And before working for UN Environment, Musonda worked for the Zambian Government, Ramsar Convention, WWF (at International, UK and East Africa Regional Offices). Her professional experience led her to work with several governments across the world cutting across Africa, Asia and Latin America.
MODERATORS
LaShawn Jefferson is Perry World House’s Deputy Director. She brings to Perry World House over two decades of legal and policy advocacy, strategic planning and communications, and research and writing on women’s international human rights through civil-society organizations and philanthropy. She joined Perry World House after almost seven years at the Ford Foundation, where she worked to advance women’s human rights globally and in the U.S. through field building and investments in the areas of rights advocacy; strategic communications and engagement; intersectional leadership and analysis; research; and capacity building. She is the author of many reports on a variety of issues confronting women around the world, and has written op-eds and articles that have appeared in the Wall Street Journal and The International Herald Tribune. She received a B.A. from Connecticut College and an M.A. in International Relations and Latin American Studies from Johns Hopkins SAIS.
Koko Warner is a visiting fellow at Perry World House and has served as Manager of the Climate Impacts, Vulnerability and Risks Subprogram at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change since 2016. From 2006 to 2016, she was the Executive Director of the Munich Climate Insurance Initiative, which she also founded. In 2014, the International Council of Science named her one of the top 20 women making waves in the climate change debate. Warner's research and publications focus on climate resilient sustainable development and opportunities, barriers, and limits to adaptation and loss and damage. Her work has appeared in publications including Nature Climate Change, Climate Policy, Global Environmental Change, Journal of Population and Environment, Disasters, Environmental Hazards, Natural Hazards, and The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Vienna.
