Name: Risk and Resilience in the Era of Climate Change
Start: 2023-09-26
End: 2023-09-26

Tue

Sep

Risk and Resilience in the Era of Climate Change

September,

2023

06:30 PM to 08:00 PM (IST)

The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) hosted a webinar to discuss the book “Risk and Resilience in the Era of Climate Change” by Vinod Thomas, Visiting Senior Fellow, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies on Tuesday, September 26, 2023, 6.30 – 8.00 pm IST. Attendees joined online via Zoom. The webinar was streamed live on YouTube.

About the book:

The book “Risk and Resilience in the Era of Climate Change” presents essential insights into the interaction between rising risks and raising the bar for resilience during the climate crisis. Its timeliness lies in applying important findings on risk and resilience to runaway climate change. When risk and resilience are brought together in the context of climate catastrophes, three key messages emerge.

The first is that accounting for the root causes of these calamities, and not just their symptoms, is essential to slowing the spike in these events. It is therefore vital to link carbon emissions from human activity to the sharp rise in climate disasters globally. The second is that growth economics and policy must factor in the failure of governments and businesses to tackle spillover harm from economic activities, as seen dramatically with global warming. With climate risks rising, this calls for a fundamental revision in the teaching and practice of business and economics. And third, prevention must become a far bigger part of resilience building, with greater preparedness for more intense destruction built into interventions. This emphasis on prevention deems disaster recovery as not just returning to how things were but building back better.

Welcome Remarks

Rakesh Mohan is President Emeritus and Distinguished Fellow at CSEP. Previously, he was Senior Fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, Yale University, Professor at Yale’s School of Management, and a Distinguished Consulting Professor at Stanford University. Closely associated with the Indian economic reforms process since the late 1980s, he has served in senior roles including as the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Secretary, Economic Affairs and Chief Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance.

Author

Vinod Thomas is currently Visiting Senior Fellow at Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, and previously Visiting Professor at National University of Singapore. He is Distinguished Fellow at the Asian Institute of Management, Manila, and a member of the Advisory Panel on Climate Change at CSEP. His current work concerns risk and resilience, new directions in evaluation, climate change and sustainable development, inclusion, and welfare. Previously, he was Senior Vice President of the Independent Evaluation Group at the World Bank Group and Director General of Independent Evaluation at the Asian Development Bank. During his time at the World Bank, he was also Director of the 1991 World Development Report, Chief Economist for Asia, Country Director for Brazil, and Vice President of the World Bank Institute. He has a PhD and MA in Economics from the University of Chicago and a BA from St. Stephen’s college, Delhi. He has authored 17 books including The Quality of Growth, 2000, Multilateral Banks and the Development Process (with Xubei Luo), 2012, Climate Change and Natural Disasters, (with Namrata Chindarkar),2017, Economic Evaluation of Sustainable Development, 2019, and Risk and Resilience in an Era of Climate Change, 2023.

Discussants

Sunita Narain is an environmentalist and writer. She currently serves as the Director General of the New Delhi based organisation Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). She is also the Editor of the fortnightly magazine, Down To Earth. Through her research and advocacy, she has been influential in building public opinion on the challenges and solutions for the environment, particularly in countries in the global south. She has over four decades of experience, particularly with in-depth research on the governance and management of the environment. She has also directed campaigns on air pollution control, community water management, pesticide regulation and sustainable urbanisation. For her lifelong and distinguished work in the area, she was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India. She was a member of the Prime Minister’s Council for Climate Change which decides on actions to address climate change impacts.

Olivia Jensen is an economist and public policy scholar specialising in water and environmental risks. She is Deputy Director and Lead Scientist (Environment and Climate) at the LRF Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk (IPUR), National University of Singapore (NUS). Previously, she was Senior Research Fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy of NUS. She is the author of numerous authoritative reports, academic papers and articles on risk perceptions and risk communications, water policy and governance, and economic and environmental regulation. She teaches post-graduate and executive courses at NUS and is the lead instructor of the Massive Open Online Course “Understanding and Communicating Risk” hosted on the edX platform. She has experience in academia, consultancy, the media and the non-government sector and has led projects for public and institutional clients including the World Bank, OECD and UNEP on finance, management and governance of water services and risks.

Laveesh Bhandari is President and a Senior Fellow at CSEP. He has been leading climate change and sustainability research at CSEP, and has published widely on subjects related to sustainable livelihoods, industrial, economic and social reforms in India, economic geography and financial inclusion. He has taught economics at Boston University and IIT Delhi. He has been the managing editor of the Journal of Emerging Market Finance and worked at the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi.

Moderator

Janak Raj is Senior Fellow at CSEP and leads the macroeconomic segment in the Growth, Finance and Development vertical. He has over 37 years of experience working in the Reserve Bank of India, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Ministry of Finance (Dept of Financial Services). He has served as an Executive Director in the Reserve Bank of India and as a member of its Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). He was also the Principal Adviser of the Monetary Policy Department and International Department of the RBI and headed its Department of Economic Policy and Research. During his time at the IMF in Washington DC, he was Senior Advisor to the Executive Director for Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Sri Lanka. He has a PhD in Economics from IIT Bombay.

Please contact Manmeet Ahuja for general inquiries and Trishna Wahengbam for media inquiries.

All content reflects the individual views of the speakers. The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) does not hold an institutional view on any subject.

To register for this event please visit the following URL: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/8516944988773/WN_zwnadUd3QYiBNd3RuUp9Yw →

Date & Time

26-09-2023
06:30 PM to 08:00 PM (IST)

Location

Online

Event Type

Webinar

Event Category

Past event

Downloads

Download the presentation

Contact Person

Manmeet Ahuja

Email

MAhuja@csep.org

Speaker(s)

Rakesh Mohan

President Emeritus and Distinguished Fellow, CSEP

Vinod Thomas

Visiting Senior Fellow, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

Sunita Narain

Director General, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE)

Olivia Jensen

Deputy Director & Lead Scientist (Environment and Climate), LRF Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk, National University of Singapore

Laveesh Bhandari

President and Senior Fellow, CSEP

Moderator(s)

Janak Raj

Senior Fellow