There seems to be much that the 193 member countries of the United Nations agree on about addressing the Climate Crisis. Governments have promised to cut heat-trapping pollution. They have recognized that tackling climate change must go hand-in-hand with ending poverty, improving health and education, reducing inequality, and spurring economic growth - all while working to preserve our oceans and forests.
At U.N. meetings, countries consider proposals to reduce the impact of climate change: everything from new technologies for advance warning of weather catastrophes, to geoengineering to save Greenland glaciers, to mass resettlement of peoples and nations whose homelands will be unlivable.
But countries disagree about which solutions to prioritize. And they fail to meet their commitments. Dr. Mila Rosenthal will discuss her contention that countries won’t be able to continue this kind of business-as-usual at the U.N. on climate agreements, and that the political momentum is moving towards action.
Dr. Mila Rosenthal has over 20 years of international experience as a leader, communicator, and educator on human rights, economic justice, and a healthy planet. She is currently Executive Director of the International Science Reserve at the New York Academy of Sciences, where she connects scientists and scientific resources with communities to respond to global climate and health disasters. Previously, as Director of Communications and Advocacy for the United Nations Development Programme, she spearheaded global public policy advocacy across 170 countries for the UN's largest agency to combat poverty, inequality, and climate change. She currently teaches at Columbia University as an Assistant Professor of Human Rights, and is the co-founder of Planet Reimagined, a start-up social venture to foster and inspire research to fight the climate crisis and deliver fair solutions for people and the planet, with the force of entertainment and mass marketing. Previously, Dr. Rosenthal held executive positions at Amnesty International, HealthRight International, and Concern Worldwide. She worked extensively on public health, anti-poverty, and human development efforts in countries in Africa, and before that in Southeast Asia, where she served with the UN peacekeeping mission in Cambodia. Dr. Rosenthal earned her PhD in social anthropology from the London School of Economics, based on two years of ethnographic research in Vietnam with women factory workers in the garment industry.
Sponsored by the Adda Bozeman Chair in International Relations.