Climate Change: The Science and the Social Justice

10:00 am - 11:00am

Tilden (5th Floor)

Speakers:

Fahmida Ahmed:

Fahmida is a Sustainability Specialist at University of California at Berkeley. In addition to broader sustainability related efforts on campus, she primarily manages the Climate Action program (http://climateaction.berkeley.edu). She facilitates implementation of ongoing and pilot projects and research on additional emissions reduction opportunities in campus operations.  She is very passionate about working with graduate and undergraduate students on campus climate action and sustainability activities.  Fahmida earned her Master's in Public Environmental Management from the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management in UC Santa Barbara, and B.A. in Economics from Smith College. Prior to UC Berkeley, Fahmida worked for the Bay Conservation and Development Commission as a legislative analyst, Siebel Systems as a marketing manager, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the Energy Analysis and Technologies Division.

Chris Jones

Chris's research interests include environmental footprinting: modeling household and community-level environmental impacts; lifecycle assessment; rural and urban development; climate change; and sustainable forestry

Alastair Iles

I grew up in Melbourne, Australia and have lived there for most of my life. I remain very Australian with visits every year to visit my special family and to cycle or hike in my favourite landscapes. Originally, I trained at the University of Melbourne to become an environmental and human rights lawyer. I worked for one and half years in the environmental law group at one of Australia’s largest law firms, Malleson Stephen Jacques. In this job, I first learned about sustainability issues in industry and the challenges of changing factory processes that have inspired my long-running interest in industry and environment.

Abandoning the corporate life, I decided to venture to Harvard Law School for a Master of Law degree in human rights and soon found myself deviating to sample a modern dance class along with the environmental public policy world at the Kennedy School of Government. At Harvard, with Professors Sheila Jasanoff and Todd Rakoff as inspiring mentors, I completed a doctoral dissertation on social learning in environmental regulation, using pollution prevention in the chemical industry in Britain and the United States as a cross-national comparative case study. I also participated in Sheila Jasanoff's Program on Science and Technology Studies at the Kennedy School.

Subsequently, I moved to Berkeley for the Ciriacy-Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellowship. This move allowed me to resume my hiking and cycling explorations. The Energy & Resources Group provided a wonderful intellectual home for several years. With Professor Gene Rochlin's encouragement, I did extensive postdoctoral training in environmental science and technology studies. I was awarded the NSF STS Postdoctoral Fellowship to investigate green chemistry science and policies, and then a MacArthur Foundation research and writing grant to study energy justice in Australia.

My off-campus interests include hiking, biking, watching modern dance and foreign films, making ceramic sculptures and cooking gourmet feasts in the sustainable food milieu of the Bay Area.

Kamal Kapadia

Kamal Kapadia is a PhD student in the Energy and Resources Group at U.C. Berkeley. Her research focuses on the root causes of vulnerability to natural disasters, and analyzes the design and effects of post-tsunami livelihood recovery programs in Sri Lanka. Kamal has worked on the subject of rural livelihoods, justice and the environment in multiple capacities: as a Master's student at Oxford, she studied the development outcomes of solar energy-based rural electrification in Nepal. She has worked as business development manager for the Solar Electric Light Company in India, Sri Lanka and Vietnam, as a consultant on rural energy/electrification strategy at the World Bank, as an activist with the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, and as a volunteer-consultant on post-tsunami recovery efforts with the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement of Sri Lanka.