This townhall meeting aims to bring together expertise from the scientific community behind the Ocean Decade and match it with the experience of coastal communities and practitioners.
Date: 20 FEBRUARY 2024 from 19:45 to 20:45
Event location: Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, 900 Convention Center Blvd., New Orleans, LA (USA)
Type: Conference
Coastal areas around the world have always attracted communities to settle and thrive, and coastal cities in particular have become a highly desirable destination for many to build their lives. While the intersection of land and sea has long provided opportunities and resources, it has recently become among the hotspots for environmental degradation, subjecting its residents to pollution and climate-related hazards as effects of a changing climate.
With the launch of the UN Ocean Decade, an opportunity arises for coastal cities to leverage ocean science in their pursuit of implementing more sustainable development practices and making coastal communities and environments more resilient. By sharing best practices, they can gain access to tools, data, and capacity.
Within this framework, this townhall meeting aims to bring together expertise from the scientific community behind the Ocean Decade and match it with the experience of coastal communities and practitioners. Organised by the Decade Collaborative Centre for Coastal Resilience, a UN Decade action, the goal of this event is to foster dialogue about the contribution of ocean science to the needs of coastal cities. The discussion will also address policymakers, providing them with tools to promote actions towards a more sustainable future for coastal cities.
Speakers:
Zach Monroe is the External Affairs Manager for the Office of Resilience and Sustainability for the City of New Orleans. In this capacity, Zach manages coastal restoration issues for the city and works collaboratively with local stakeholder groups, industry associations, community-based organizations, and other government agencies. He also co-leads the city's Federal Infrastructure Taskforce, which seeks to secure funding for critical climate and infrastructure projects. His previous work includes the Office of U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, the Florida Democratic Party, New Orleans Councilmember Kristin Palmer, and government relations firm Sabiston Consultants. Zach is a New Orleans native and a graduate of Tulane University.
David Behar is Climate Program Director at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and Chair of Practitioner Exchange for Effective Response to Sea Level Rise, or “PEERS.” His professional focus is on adaptation practice, science translation, and collaboration building. David co-founded the Water Utility Climate Alliance (WUCA) in 2008 and chaired San Francisco’s first Sea Level Rise Committee in 2013, which created the award-winning “Guidance for Incorporating Sea Level Rise into Capital Planning.” In 2021-22, he led development of global practitioner workshops on coastal resilience that helped frame the need for a coastal resilience community of practice, leading to the launch of PEERS in October 2023. He has co-authored peer review journal articles focused on actionable science and climate adaptation practice in Earth’s Future, Science, Conservation Letters, Climate Services, and Nature Communications Earth & Environment.
Vanessa Sarah Salvo is a marine scientist at the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM) of the Spanish National Research Council (CISC), in the EMBIMOS (EnvironMent and sustainaBility participatory InforMatiOn Systems) research group, working on the link between citizen science information and policy. At ICM-CSIC, she is a member of the scientific coordination of the Ocean Cities Network programme, endorsed by IOC-UNESCO under the Ocean Decade, to strengthen the link between science and local governance towards science-based policy. She is also the scientific director of the NGO Posidonia Green Project, which represents the 2nd vice-presidency of the Citizens' Council for Sustainability of the City of Barcelona.
Villy Kourafalou is Professor of Ocean Sciences at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School. She is an expert on coastal ocean dynamics with applications on predictions and forecasts that bring ocean influence to the coastal, land and urban environments. She co-chairs the UN Ocean Decade Program “CoastPredict: observing and predicting the Global Coastal Ocean.”
Nadia Pinardi holds a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Harvard University, and she is full professor of Oceanography at Bologna University. She is Member of the European Academy of Sciences and of the Scientific Council of the Unesco Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe. Since 2019, she is elected vice-president of the Commission for Observation, Infrastructure and Information Systems (Infrastructure Commission) of WMO. She chairs the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development Program “CoastPredict" and is director of the UN Decade Collaborative Centre for Coastal Resilience hosted by the University of Bologna.
The event will be in-person only and will not be live-streamed. To attend, please register to the Ocean Sciences Meeting.
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