Abstract

Following the Copenhagen Conference, there is greater awareness of the impending need to adapt to what will clearly be unavoidable climate change while continuing the essential effort to mitigate it at its source by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Adaptation and mitigation place dramatically different requirements on the forecasting and assessment processes. Assessments for mitigation are designed to support the relatively small number of central decision-makers concerned with global financial and energy policies and regulations, while many decisions about adaptation will be taken at the local and regional levels. How can the scientific, technological, and policy tools developed thus far for global mitigation be adapted to the needs of millions of decision-makers in hundreds of regions?

This talk argues that a new information intensive social technology, which we call Knowledge Action Networks, may be a way to link the international science, technology, and policy communities with regional knowledge leaders and local decision makers. We will illustrate with examples drawn from the Cambridge/UCSD Global Water Initiative.

Bio: Charles F. Kennel, Director, Dean, Vice-Chancellor, and Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Scripps Institution of Oceanography Member, Sustainability Solutions Institute, University of California, San Diego

Charles F. Kennel was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and educated in astronomy and astrophysics at Harvard and Princeton. He joined the UCLA Department of Physics, where he taught space plasma physics and astrophysics, and eventually chaired the department. He was the UCLA Executive Vice Chancellor, its chief academic officer, from 1996-1998.

From 1994 to 1996, Kennel was Associate Administrator at NASA for Mission to Planet Earth. His experiences at NASA convinced him to remain in earth and environmental science. He became the ninth Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Vice Chancellor of Marine Sciences at the University of California, San Diego, serving from 1997 to 2006. He was also the founding director of the UCSD Environment and Sustainability Initiative, embracing teaching, research, campus operations, and public outreach, and is a member of the UCSD Sustainability Solutions Institute.