Amanda Lynch: Addressing Accelerated Arctic Shifts

• Professor Amanda Lynch took part in Climate Week on Monday, September 22, speaking at the UNESCO Decade of the Cryosphere event at the Explorer’s Club. The event highlighted urgent scientific insights on polar ice and the global impacts of its melting. 

• Later that day, Lynch joined “Beyond the Ice: Collaborative Solutions for a Resilient Arctic,” a scholar-focused forum co-hosted by the Monaco Foundation and Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
   
• On Tuesday, September 23, Lynch participated in “Reality Check – The Future of Global Climate Science,” a private briefing convened by the Institute for Sustainable Communities, the International Olymic Committee, and the World Meteorological Organization. The dialogue aimed at securing private-sector funding for the World Climate Research Programme in response to reduced U.S. support.

Timmons Roberts: Confronting Climate Obstruction 

• On September 22, Professor J. Timmons Roberts and colleagues in the Climate Social Science Network (CSSN) launched their new volume, Climate Obstruction: A Global Assessment. The book, available free online starting  October 14, documents how vested interests delay climate action worldwide. 
   
• Building momentum towards the United Nations’ 30th Convening of the Parties (COP 30) in Belém, Roberts was invited by the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General, the Federative Republic of Brazil, and UNESCO to present at the UN’s “High-Level Solutions Dialogue on Information Integrity.” His remarks emphasized the role of the CSSN in strengthening public trust in climate information.

• Roberts also joined events at Columbia University’s School of International Affairs, the New York Law Association, and met with collaborators and founders throughout the week. 

Ricardo Bayon: Alumni Connections Amidst the Action

• Climate Week also served as a reunion space: former students of “Finance and the Environment” and “Environmental Risk and Resilience in the Financial System” gathered together with instructor Ricardo Bayon in New York to reconnect and reflect. The group celebrated their shared roots in Brown’s environmental studies program—a testament of IBES’s lasting community beyond campus.