Press release from Infrastructure Services Group:
(Asheville, North Carolina; June 19, 2018): Extreme and slow-onset climate change-related events are influencing the global movement of people within and across boundaries. From people forced to relocate due to lands destroyed by hurricane or wildfires, to communities facing the loss of land due to sea level rise, “climate change induced displacement” involves a complexity of cultural, social, legal and economic issues.
In a free public event at The Collider on June 20, national and international climate law, policy, and science experts will gather to discuss how climate displacement has, and will increasingly continue, to affect the U.S. Attendees will have the opportunity to discuss the particular challenges vulnerable communities such as indigenous peoples are facing and how they are affected disproportionately by climate change.
Among the speakers will be University of California, Santa Barbara environmental studies professor Julie K. Maldonado, who is also involved with the Livelihoods Knowledge Exchange Network (LiKEN) and serves as co-organizer of Rising Voices: Collaborative Science with Indigenous Knowledge for Climate Solutions, and NOAA climate specialist Edward Gardiner, PhD, who will offer a brief explanation of the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit.
Doors open at 5:15 p.m., with a reception and screening of the short documentary, “Can’t Stop the Water,” about the perilous conditions faced by residents of the Isle de Jean Charles in southern Louisiana. The program will conclude at 7:30 p.m. following excerpts from “Anote’s Ark,” a film on climate migration.
The event is free and open to the public, with donations accepted at the door to benefit communities affected by climate-induced displacement as well as The Collider, a nonprofit organization offering an innovation ecosystem for climate entrepreneurship.
Environmental attorney Dane Ratliff, senior fellow of the Center for International Sustainable Development Law, and Maya Prabhu, M.D., of Yale University’s School of Medicine, are organizers of the event as well as an invitation-only technical workshop the next day, also at The Collider. It will involve international climate law and policy experts from the UN, World Bank, Platform on Disaster Displacement, and Center for International Sustainable Development Law, together with climate scientists from Asheville’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Centers for Environmental Information (NOAA NCEI).
This event is a prelude to an international conference to be held at Yale University’s MacMillan Center, Oct. 12-13, 2018.
Co-sponsors include The Collider and Collider member businesses Infrastructure Services Group LLC and CASE Consultants International. The Collider is located on the top floor of the Wells Fargo building in downtown Asheville, at 1 Haywood St. More information and free tickets for the public event are available at Eventbrite; or search “Displaced by Climate: The Intersection of Science, Law & Policy.”
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