From Nairobi to New Orleans: Reporting on Resilience, Climate Change and Population Dynamics

IIASA's World Population Program was invited by the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) to present its research at their 24th Annual Conference between 3-7 September 2014 in New Orleans at the all day workshop on the topic "Disasters and Extreme Weather: Gathering the News and Keeping Safe". The workshop is centered around the question what makes communities resilient and will discuss the complex connections between climate change and population dynamics, including urbanization, migration, gender and health, and how to turn this complexity into compelling stories about cities around the world.

Across the globe, from megacities to small coastal communities, people are confronting the coming challenges of climate change. These changes, both rapid and slow, are putting more people at risk than ever before as urban and coastal areas grow. From villages in the Philippines to UN forums, the calls for increasing the resilience for the most vulnerable people are deafening. But reporting on resilience requires pushing the boundaries of the traditional environmental beat and looking beyond national borders. This workshop of reporters and experts from Africa, Asia, and the United States will share story tips, demonstrate data tools, and compare cross-border approaches to reporting on resilience, climate, and population dynamics.

On behalf of the World Population Program former IIASA Senior Scholar William P. Butz will present the highlights from the recently published special feature of Ecology and Society entitled "Education and differential Vulnerability to Natural Disasters". He will discuss the basic hypothesis that societies can develop the most effective long-term defense against the dangers of climate change by strengthening human capacity, primarily through education.

For more information to the workshop please visit the SEJ website.

For more information to the special feature please visit the World Population Program website.

Last edited: 01 September 2014