Climate, Biodiversity, and Sustainability: Three Components of a Single Challenge
The Fairfield Osborn Jr. Memorial Lecture
Event Details
- Type
- Friday Lecture Series
- Speaker(s)
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Katherine Richardson, Ph.D., D.Sc., professor in biological oceanography, Leader of the Sustainability Science Centre and Queen Margrethe’s and Vigdís Finnbogadóttir’s Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Ocean, Climate, and Society, University of Copenhagen
- Speaker bio(s)
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We humans – just as all other organisms- survive by using the Earth’s limited resources. Until recently, the human demand for resources was small compared to the supply but now our numbers are so great that this demand is impacting global environmental conditions and threatens to alter the global conditions that have supported the development of modern civilizations. It is, for example, the impacts of our activities on the Earth system that have led to the climate and biodiversity crises. Just as our ancestors realized that sustained societal development required management of their impacts on the local environment, we are recognizing that sustainable development of our societies requires management of our impacts on the global environment. This talk presents the planetary boundaries framework (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh2458) which is designed to support such management by proposing guardrails for human perturbation of critical Earth system processes.
Katherine Richardson is a professor in biological oceanography at the University of Copenhagen, leader of the Sustainability Science Centre, a principal investigator in the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, and Leader of the Queen Margrethe’s and Vigdís Finnbogadóttir´s Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Ocean, Climate, and Society. Her research focuses on the importance of biological processes in the ocean for the uptake of CO2 from the atmosphere and how ocean biology, including diversity, contributes to ocean function in the Earth System. Katherine is also a core developer of the Planetary Boundaries framework that attempts to identify a safe operating space for humanity in its impact on global resources. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Harvard College (1976), a Ph.D. from the University of Wales (awarded while on a Marshall Fellowship) and a D.Sc. from the University of Copenhagen. Richardson was Chairman of the Danish Commission on Climate Change Policy that reported in 2010 and presented a roadmap for how Denmark can become independent of fossil fuels by 2050. She is at present a member of the Government appointed Danish Climate Council and was a member of the 15-person Independent Group of Scientists appointed by Ban Ki Moon to draft the 2019 UN Global Sustainable Development Report. Further, she is a member of the Danish Government’s Biodiversity Partnership for 2023-2024. She is Co-Editor in Chief of the Marine Ecology Progress Series and a member of the editorial board for Global Sustainability. Authorship of books includes Our Threatened Oceans (2008) and Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges and Decisions (2014). She is or has been a member or Chair of numerous national and international committees and organisations relating to science policy and/or sustainability. She is currently co-chair of the Northern European Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). Dr. Richardson has been awarded the Danish Order of the Dannebrog (1st level). In 2022, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Tromsø, Norway.
FLS lectures will take place in Caspary Auditorium and virtually via Zoom. We recommend virtual participants log out of VPN prior to logging in to Zoom. Please do not share the link or post on social media. This talk will be recorded for the RU community.
- Open to
- Tri-Institutional