Diana Margaret Liverman (born May 15, 1954, Accra, Ghana)is Regents Professor of Geography and Development, and formerly co-Director of the Institute of the Environment at the University of Arizona, USA. She is an expert on the human dimensions of global environmental change and the impacts of climate on society. She was a co-author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) October 8, 2018 Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5ºC.
Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located along the Gulf of Guinea and Atlantic Ocean, in the subregion of West Africa. Spanning a land mass of 238,535 km2 (92,099 sq mi), Ghana is bordered by the Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, Togo in the east and the Gulf of Guinea and Atlantic Ocean in the south. Ghana means "Warrior King" in the Soninke language.
Geography is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of the Earth and planets. The first person to use the word γεωγραφία was Eratosthenes. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding of Earth and its human and natural complexities—not merely where objects are, but also how they have changed and come to be.
Development geography is a branch of geography which refers to the standard of living and its quality of life of its human inhabitants. In this context, development is a process of change that affects people's lives. It may involve an improvement in the quality of life as perceived by the people undergoing change. However, development is not always a positive process. Gunder Frank commented on the global economic forces that lead to the development of underdevelopment. This is covered in his dependency theory.
Diana Liverman was born in Accra, Ghana to British parents, and the family later moved back to the UK. She studied geography at University College London, the University of Toronto, and UCLA where she received her PhD in 1984. She was a student and postdoc at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado from 1982-1985, working with Steve Schneider. She then taught geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she was also affiliated with the Institute for Environmental Studies and at Penn State University where she was the Associate Director of the Earth System Science Center directed by Eric Barron. She moved to the University of Arizona in 1995 to become Director of Latin American Studies.
University College London (UCL) is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom. It is a constituent college of the federal University of London, and is the third largest university in the United Kingdom by total enrolment, and the largest by postgraduate enrolment.
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in the colony of Upper Canada. Originally controlled by the Church of England, the university assumed the present name in 1850 upon becoming a secular institution. As a collegiate university, it comprises eleven colleges, which differ in character and history, each with substantial autonomy on financial and institutional affairs. It has two satellite campuses in Scarborough and Mississauga.
The US National Center for Atmospheric Research is a US federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) managed by the nonprofit University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). NCAR has multiple facilities, including the I. M. Pei-designed Mesa Laboratory headquarters in Boulder, Colorado. Studies include meteorology, climate science, atmospheric chemistry, solar-terrestrial interactions, environmental and societal impacts.
In 2003 she was appointed to the first Chair in Environmental Science at the University of Oxford (where she was also the first woman appointed to a chair in the School of Geography), and became Director of the Environmental Change Institute,a centre for research, teaching and outreach on the environment at Oxford University. Over five years she increased the income, size, and profile of ECI, hiring a number of distinguished scholars and working with groups such as the Tyndall Centre and James Martin 21st Century School. In 2009 she returned to Arizona to co-direct the Institute of the Environment, working with Prof. Jonathan Overpeck until 2016 when the University restructured senior personnel.
The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in continuous operation. It grew rapidly from 1167 when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris. After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled north-east to Cambridge where they established what became the University of Cambridge. The two 'ancient universities' are frequently jointly called 'Oxbridge'. The history and influence of the University of Oxford has made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world.
She has served on several national and international committees including the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change, and the NAS Committee on America's Climate Choices. She also chaired the scientific advisory committee of the Global Environmental Change and Food Systems (GECAFS) program and of the IHDP Earth System Governance Project. She co-chaired a transition team to create a new international research initiative, Future Earth, for an Alliance of international organizations that include ICSU, UNEP, and UNESCO.
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the National Academy of Medicine (NAM).
The Earth System Governance Project is a long-term, interdisciplinary social science research programme originally developed under the auspices of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change. It started in January 2009.
She serves on the board of a number of organizations including cultural and creative sustainability experts Julie's Bicycle (http://www.juliesbicycle.com/)
Over 60 students have graduated under her supervision.
Liverman has made many contributions to understanding of the human dimensions of global environmental change. Her publications and research grants deal with climate impacts, vulnerability and adaptation, climate change and food security, and climate policy, mitigation and justice especially in the developing world. She has a particular interest in the political ecology of environmental management in the Americas, especially in Mexico.
Liverman worked on the human impacts of drought as early as the 1980s, and the impacts of climate change on food systems using early climate modelling techniques and crop simulation models. Having identified the limitations to modelling approaches, fieldwork in Mexico followed, examining vulnerability to natural hazards in the agricultural sector, and the potential impacts of climatic change on food systems. Liverman has also examined the effects of neoliberalism on Latin American society and environmental regimes, particularly along the US-Mexico border.
In recent years she has focused on the international dimensions of climate policy and the growth of the new carbon economy, and is a frequent speaker and commentator on global climate issues.She was a co-author of a series of high-profile papers on planetary boundaries and Earth system governance.
She has also led several major collaborative research projects, funded mainly by US and European agencies. In 2011 she was part of a group who briefed the Dalai Lama (2011)on climate change.
Sir Robert Tony Watson CMG FRS is a British chemist who has worked on atmospheric science issues including ozone depletion, global warming and paleoclimatology since the 1980s.
Climate change and agriculture are interrelated processes, both of which take place on a global scale. Climate change affects agriculture in a number of ways, including through changes in average temperatures, rainfall, and climate extremes ; changes in pests and diseases; changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide and ground-level ozone concentrations; changes in the nutritional quality of some foods; and changes in sea level.
Scientific opinion on climate change is a judgment of scientists regarding the degree to which global warming is occurring, its likely causes, and its probable consequences.
The effects of global warming are the environmental and social changes caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. There is a scientific consensus that climate change is occurring, and that human activities are the primary driver. Many impacts of climate change have already been observed, including glacier retreat, changes in the timing of seasonal events, and changes in agricultural productivity. Anthropogenic forcing has likely contributed to some of the observed changes, including sea level rise, changes in climate extremes, declines in Arctic sea ice extent and glacier retreat.
The economics of global warming concerns the economic aspects of global warming; this can inform policies that governments might consider in response. A number of factors make this a difficult problem from both economic and political perspectives: it is a long-term, intergenerational problem; benefits and costs are distributed unequally both within and across countries; and scientific and public opinions may diverge.
Climate change adaptation is a response to global warming, that seeks to reduce the vulnerability of social and biological systems to relatively sudden change and thus offset the effects of global warming. Even if emissions are stabilized relatively soon, global warming and its effects should last many years, and adaptation would be necessary to the resulting changes in climate. Adaptation is especially important in developing countries since those countries are predicted to bear the brunt of the effects of global warming. That is, the capacity and potential for humans to adapt is unevenly distributed across different regions and populations, and developing countries generally have less capacity to adapt. Furthermore, the degree of adaptation correlates to the situational focus on environmental issues. Therefore, adaptation requires the situational assessment of sensitivity and vulnerability to environmental impacts.
Global warming is a long-term rise in the average temperature of the Earth's climate system, an aspect of climate change shown by temperature measurements and by multiple effects of the warming. The term commonly refers to the mainly human-caused observed warming since pre-industrial times and its projected continuation, though there were also much earlier periods of global warming. In the modern context the terms global warming and climate change are commonly used interchangeably, but climate change includes both global warming and its effects, such as changes to precipitation and impacts that differ by region. Many of the observed warming changes since the 1950s are unprecedented in the instrumental temperature record, and in historical and paleoclimate proxy records of climate change over thousands to millions of years.
Robert W. Kates was an American geographer and independent scholar in Trenton, Maine, and University Professor (Emeritus) at Brown University.
The Burtoni Award was created in 2003 by a group of leading experts and policy makers in the field of climate change. Its purpose is to recognize outstanding contributions to the science of adaptation to climate change. The award is named after the first recipient of the award, Ian Burton, an emeritus professor at the University of Toronto and a pioneer in the field of adaptation to climate change and extreme events and disasters. Ian has contributed to three assessment reports of the IPCC and the recent Special Report on Extremes (SREX).
Regional effects of global warming are long-term significant changes in the expected patterns of average weather of a specific region due to global warming. The world average temperature is rising due to the greenhouse effect caused by increasing levels of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide. When the global temperature changes, the changes in climate are not expected to be uniform across the Earth. In particular, land areas change more quickly than oceans, and northern high latitudes change more quickly than the tropics, and the margins of biome regions change faster than do their cores.
The environmental impact of the energy industry is diverse. Energy has been harnessed by human beings for millennia. Initially it was with the use of fire for light, heat, cooking and for safety, and its use can be traced back at least 1.9 million years. In recent years there has been a trend towards the increased commercialization of various renewable energy sources.
This article is about climate change, industry and society.
This article describes the economic impacts of climate change. Given the inherent nature of economic forecasting, which involves significant degrees of uncertainty, estimates of the results of global warming over the 21st century have varied widely. Many analyses, such as that of the Stern Review presented to the British Government, have predicted reductions by several percent of world gross domestic product due to climate related costs such as dealing with increased extreme weather events and stresses to low-lying areas due to sea level rises. Other studies by independent economists looking at the effects of climate change have found more ambiguous results around the range of net-neutral changes when all aspects of the issue are evaluated, though the issue remains intensely debated.
Climate change and poverty link a process and a condition that are interrelated. While climate change and global warming affect the natural environment, especially agriculture, it also affects humans. Climate change globally impacts poverty, particularly in low-income communities.
Climate change in Africa pertains to aspects of climate change within the continent of Africa.
Human Rights and Climate Change is a conceptual and legal framework under which international human rights and their relationship to global warming are studied, analyzed, and addressed. The framework has been employed by governments, United Nations organizations, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, human rights and environmental advocates, and academics to guide national and international policy on climate change under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the core international human rights instruments.
The contributions of women in climate change have received increasing attention in the early 21st century. Feedback from women and the issues faced by women have been described as "imperative" by the United Nations and "critical" by the Population Reference Bureau. A report by the World Health Organization concluded that incorporating gender-based analysis would "provide more effective climate change mitigation and adaptation."
Climate change has brought about possibly permanent alterations to Earth's geological, biological and ecological systems. These changes have led to the emergence of a not so large-scale environmental hazards to human health, such as extreme weather, ozone depletion, increased danger of wildland fires, loss of biodiversity, stresses to food-producing systems and the global spread of infectious diseases. In addition, climatic changes are estimated to cause over 150,000 deaths annually.
Fatima Denton is the Co-ordinator for the African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC) of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She directs a special initiatives division focused on innovation, science, technology and natural resource management. She partners with countries such as Benin and Liberia to develop and implement country needs assessment missions.
"IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty