Will our Climate be a casualty of COVID?

Webcast recorded 18 June 2020

Will Australia and the world have the money, the energy and the discipline to commit and carry through with CO2 emission reduction targets through cleaner energy and better practices, or will our climate be another casualty of COVID? 

Dr Wendy Craik AM and Emeritus Prof Ian Noble discuss:

• Is the COVID caused reduction in emissions likely to have a lasting impact on our emissions path?
• What can we learn from COVID that could apply to dealing with climate change? Will it change our behaviour? For example, our attitude to risks; our willingness to invest in emissions reduction and adaptation, our cooperation with other countries.
• Australia has just been through its worst climate catastrophe in living memory with the nation ablaze for six months - and is now hit by COVID. What are the long-term impacts of this double whammy for our economy and environment?
• What are some of the strategies we might consider for working with other countries on climate post COVID - will the current structures still be relevant or have the goal posts shifted?
• What can business in Australia do to come out of COVID in a cleaner, greener way than it went into the crisis?
• Who is going to pay?

Watch the trailer

Dr Wendy Craik AM

Dr Wendy Craik AM has been described as 'a woman of many firsts. A scientist by profession Wendy became head of the Townsville office of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority in 1992, then set another precedent in 1995 when she became the first woman to lead the National Farmers Federation. She was the first female Chief Executive of the Murray Darling Basin Commission (2004 -2008) and has held many positions on boards and advisory councils; including President of the National Competition Council, Chair of the Australian Fisheries Management Authority, Chair of the National Rural Advisory Council, member of the Productivity Commission, chair of the Australian Rural Leadership Foundation, and served on the boards of the WorldFish Center, Dairy Australia and on the Council of the University of South Australia.

In 2020 Wendy serves on the board of the Reserve Bank of Australia and is Chair of the Climate Change Authority, a body which reviews and advises the government on climate change policy. She is also a board member of the Australian Farm Institute and a member of the Advisory Board for the Centre for Strategy and Governance, the Advisory Board of the Public Leadership Research Group – Howard Library of the University of New South Wales Member and the Future Drought Fund Consultative Committee.

Wendy was invested as a Member of the Order of Australia in 2007 for service to the natural resource sector of the economy, particularly in the areas of fisheries, marine ecology and management of water reform, and for contributions to policies affecting rural and regional Australia.

Emeritus Professor Ian Noble

Emeritus Professor Ian Noble is a consultant on adaptation who provides advice to several governments and UN agencies on the measuring of adaptation effectiveness, financial allocation based on needs and monitoring & evaluation of adaptation related development programs. He is an Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University and Chief Scientific advisor to the University of Notre Dame’s ND-GAIN Index, which ranks the climate adaptation performance for 177 countries over the last 17 years. Ian retired as Lead Climate Change Specialist at the World Bank in Washington in 2011, where he had particular responsibility for the Bank’s activities in adaptation to climate change. He also worked with the Carbon Finance Unit on the BioCarbon Fund and on emissions reductions through reduced deforestation and forest degradation.  

Before coming to the Bank in 2002 Ian was Professor of Global Change Research at the Australian National University. He has played senior roles in the IPCC process, which prepares scientific assessments relevant to climate policy, and in international cooperative research on climate change as part of the IGBP (International Geosphere Biosphere Program), including chairing the Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems. In Australia he participated in the public and policy debate over responses to climate change and served as a Commissioner in an inquiry into the future of the Australian forests and forest industries. He was a Professor of Global Change Research and CEO for the CRC for Greenhouse Accounting at ANU between 1975 and 2002, when he moved to the World Bank.

An ecologist by training, Ian 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. In 1999 he was elected as Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and has received the Australian Centenary Medal for Services to Ecology (2001).

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