Biodiversity Summit 2006

Speakers at the Biodiversity Summit 2009

The climate crisis necessitates a transformation in Australian and global policies to protect biodiversity, recognising the crucial role of natural ecosystems in the global carbon cycle and in permanently storing carbon. This is the first national forum devoted to addressing this vital and urgent issue.

The line up of speakers include:

Dr Rachel Warren. She is a NERC Advanced Fellow at the University of East Anglia. She is a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report, specializing in long term aspects of mitigation, and upon climate impacts upon natural ecosystems. She has produced 40 peer-reviewed publications and has led two key assessments of climate impacts upon human and natural systems, and on integrated assessment modeling, for the Stern Review.

Since completing her PhD (Physics, 1989, Cambridge) she has held a number of posts through which she has made a major contribution to decisions on environmental policies. At the NOAA Environmental Research Laboratories her work provided key evidence on the environmental acceptability of many CFC substitutes, and clinched the inclusion of fluorocarbons in the Kyoto Protocol, winning the NOAA Aeronomy Laboratories Outstanding Scientific Paper Award. At Imperial College her work as head of the integrated assessment modelling (IAM) unit was used in the development of international UN ECE protocols and to underpin the position of the UK during the negotiations.

She is now leading the development of the Community Integrated Assessment System (CIAS) at the Tyndall Centre which simulates climate change and its impacts on the earth system, and how these may be reduced through timely policies. She is leading workstream 1 of the AVOIDing dangerous climate change project for DEFRA (UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), simulating the benefits of alternative climate policies compared to no-policy baselines, to assist the UK government in its preparations for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties in December 2009.

Professor Brendan Mackey. He is a Professor of Environmental Science at The Fenner School of Environment & Society, The Australian National University. His research is focused on the role of forests in the global carbon cycle and the resulting policy implications. He is also undertaking research into the indirect impacts of climate change on biodiversity and ecosystem-based adaptation. Brendan convenes a graduate course in Climate Change Vulnerability & Adapatation, and co-convenes the undergraduate course Blue Planet: an introduction to Earth system science. He is a Council Member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and of Earth Charter International.

Dr Heather Keith. She is a forest ecologist who works on measurement of the carbon cycle and the role of natural forests in the global carbon cycle. She works at the Fenner School of Environment and Society at ANU, and previously has worked at CSIRO Division of Forestry in Canberra and Hobart, the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology in Britain, and the Waite Agricultural Research Institute in Adelaide. She has recently completed a major multi-disciplinary project on carbon cycling in native forests and the effects of climate variability and disturbance on ecosystem pools and fluxes. These results provide insights into the processes controlling the net biosphere atmosphere exchange of carbon.

Dr Keith and Prof Mackey are two of the co-authors of just published work showing that Australian mountain ash forests have the highest known biomass carbon densities in the world, storing more than twice as much carbon per hectare as tropical forests. Read the paper at: www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0901970106/DCSupplemental.

Vanessa Bleyer. She is a solicitor who practies in environment law, with specific experience acting for non-government organisations who have commenced legal proceedings under the Environment Protection & Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. She was the President of Lawyers for Forests Inc from 2003 to 2007 and now acts for LFF.

Andrew Walker. He is a barrister who practices in planning and environment law, also with specific experience with the Environment Protection & Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. He is the Vice-President of Lawyers for Forests Inc.

Andrew Macintosh. He is Associate Director of the ANU Centre for Environmental Law and Policy, and formerly Deputy Director of the Australia Institute. He has written extensively on environmental law and policy, particularly climate change and is currently co-writing a history of the environment and heritage portfolio under the Howard Government. He has particular interests in international and domestic climate law and policy, planning law and policy, and the relationship between international trade and environmental law.

Peg Putt. She is a member of The Wilderness Society’s international climate change team and working through them with the newly formed international Ecosystems Climate Alliance. She is closely involved in the international negotiations leading up to the Copenhagen climate conference in December 2009. She has previously worked with Aboriginal communities on Elcho Island in the Northern Territory, Director of the Tasmanian Conservation Trust, and Leader of the Greens in the Tasmanian parliament.

Margaret Blakers. She is Director of the Green Institute and has been investigating how Australia’s biocarbon accounts are compiled (accounts for carbon stored in the landscape as distinct from fossil carbon). She has a long-standing commitment to environment and biodiversity as a forest and mallee campaigner, organiser of the first Atlas of Australian Birds, former adviser to Greens Senator Bob Brown, and organiser of the first Global Greens conference. In the last two years she has taken a particular interest in how Australia’s biocarbon accounts are compiled, recognising the necessity for reliable accounts to underpin policies and funding for permanent storage of carbon in natural ecosystems.