Mark New: Using Climate Impacts Attribution to Inform Adaptation Action

The Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory is honored to recommence the Wrigley Lecture Series. This prestigious series has featured leading sustainability and global futures thought leaders including Vandana Shiva, Michael Pollan, M. Sanjayan, William McDonough, Kate Brandt, and Thomas Friedman.

In this lecture, Mark New will present work conducted by the African Climate and Development Initiative at the University of Cape Town on impacts attribution using examples from water security, food security and sovereign catastrophe insurance. Importantly, in some of these examples, the potential of adaptation options can be tested to offset attributable climate impacts, allowing quantification of the effectiveness of adaptation in a manner similar to approaches used in medical treatment studies.