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About the Seminar

Enhancing resilience has become a key element of preparedness for extreme events and climate change. While much progress has been made in defining components of resilience, many questions remain about identification of appropriate strategies for building resilience, barriers to implementation of these strategies, and limits to the potential effectiveness of these efforts. New questions are also emerging about inherent limitations of resilience based approaches, suggesting that resiliency efforts must be coupled with broader transformations of the social and political conditions that create and perpetuate vulnerabilities. Investigation of resilience options and barriers has particular resonance for urbanized coastal communities, many of which face significant climate hazards and development related pressures and are also encountering a suite of technical, political, financial, legal, and policy hurdles to adaptation. This project explored these issues through a case study of coastal New Jersey, USA. The methodology entailed a co-production approach, whereby stakeholders and researchers collaborated in the development of climate risk and vulnerability information and identification of resilience options and barriers. The collaboration provided important insights into barriers, limits and limitations of ongoing resilience building efforts in the region but also revealed potential openings for transformation. 

About Dr. Leichenko

Robin Leichenko is Professor and Chair of Geography at Rutgers University and co-director of the Rutgers Climate Institute. Her research explores economic vulnerability and resilience to climate change, economic and social equity implications of climate adaptation, and the interplay between climate extremes and urban spatial development. Leichenko served as a review editor for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fibh Assessment Report and as a contributing author on the IPCC Special Report on Extreme Events. Leichenko won the Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Contribution from the Association of American Geographers.