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paty romero-lankao

Cities are drivers and targets of global environmental change. Yet, and ironically our engines of development and innovations remain relatively understudied and ill-equipped for action. I am aware of the scientific and societal relevance of this challenge. But rather than examining urban sustainable development through a climate, a carbon or a water lens, I have has analyzed the climate, carbon and water through a sustainable development lens. I have developed a solid understanding, for use in Earth system models, of the socioeconomic, environmental and institutional drivers of cities' trajectories of change explaining cities' a) use of energy, water and other resources as well as their related emissions, and b) vulnerability/resilience to climate relevant threats. Furthermore, I have analyzed the institutional constraints and opportunities for the design and implementation of policy responses aimed at making cities more sustainable and resilient to climate change and other environmental stresses.

I worked on three activities as part of this long-term effort:

•  The Initiative to Attain Resilient and Sustainable Relationships among Carbon, Climate and Cities (RESUCCCITIES), which seeks to bring together natural and social scientists to bridge the gap between global models and fragmented urban case studies. It aims at an understanding, for use in Earth system models , of the societal and environmental drivers of cities' trajectories of change explaining their a) use of energy & land, related emissions; b) vulnerability/resilience to climate relevant threats.

•  The research report “Adapting to Climate Change in Urban Areas. The possibilities and constraints in low- and middle-income nations” ( http://www.iied.org/HS/topics/accc.html) commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation. This report discusses the constraints and possibilities for adaptation to climate change in urban areas in low- and middle-income nations.

•  The two-years project ADaptation to the health impacts of Air Pollution and climaTe Extremes in Latin American cities (ADAPTE) recently granted by IAI. ADAPTE seeks to investigate a crucial and not yet fully explored problem: the independent and combined effects of exposure to weather related stresses and air pollution and human vulnerability to urban health in four Latin American cities: Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Mexico City, and Santiago Chile. The project will explore how patterns in human mortality/morbidity and vulnerability vary spatially, and the human and natural factors accounting for this differential distribution within the cities.

   

Publications

  • Satterthwaite, D., Huq, S., Pelling, M., Reid, A. and Romero-Lankao, P. 2007. Building Climate Change Resilience in Urban Areas and among Urban Populations in Low- and Middle-income Nations, commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) (forthcoming).
  • Brasseur, G., Jacobs, K. Barron, E., Benedick, R., Chameides , W., Dietz , T., Romero Lankao, P., McFarland, M., Mooney , H., Nathan, D., Parson, E., Richels, R., 2007: Analysis of Global Change Assessments: Lessons Learned, THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS, Washington US.
  • Haites, E., Caldeira, K., Romero Lankao, P., Rose, A., Wilbanks, T., (2007) “What are the options and measures that could significantly affect the carbon cycle?”, State of the Carbon Cycle Report (SOCCR), (forthcoming)
  • Pataki, D., Fung, A., Nowak, D., McPherson, E., Pouyat, R., Golubiewski, N., Kennedy, C., Romero Lankao, P., and Alig, E., (2007) “Chapter 14. Human Settlements and the North American Carbon Cycle David J., State of the Carbon Cycle Report (SOCCR), (forthcoming)
  • Wilbanks, T., Romero Lankao, P. 2007: “ The human dimensions of global environmental change” Sage Book on Environment and Society , Editors: Pretty, J., Ball, A., Benton, T., Guivant, J., Lee, D., Orr, D., Pfeffer, M, and Ward, H. pp.353-362.
  • Wilbanks, T., Romero Lankao, P. et al 2007: “Chapter 7: Industry, Settlement, and Society” IPCC WGII Fourth Assessment Report Cambridge University (forthcoming)
  • Romero Lankao, P. 2007: “How do Local Governments in Mexico City Manage Global Warming?” Local Environment May-August 2007 (forthcoming)
  • Romero Lankao, P. 2007: “Descentralización y retiro del estado ¿Mecanismos para gestionar sustentablemente el agua?”, en Gestión y Política Pública, (Vol XVI No 1). México, p.29-60
  • Romero Lankao, P. 2007: “Are we missing the point? Particularities of urbanization, sustainability and carbon emissions in Latin American cities”, Environment and Urbanization Volume 19, No. 1: pp.159-175
  • Romero Lankao, P. 2006: Ciencias Sociales y carbono en México ¿Una relación evidente? Ciencia y Desarrollo, Dic. 2006, México

 

Committees, conferences and sessions

1. As member of the Global Carbon Project Scientific Committee I have co-organized the activity Urban and Regional Carbon Management (URCM), which fosters and coordinates placed based carbon budgets using comparative studies and historical approaches to urban, regional, and global carbon foot prints, their determinants, trajectories, and management opportunities. http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/activities.htm

2. Analysis of Global Change Assessments: I was member of an ad hoc committee created by the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate of the National Academies. The committee seeks to identify lessons learned from past assessments to guide future global change assessment activities of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP). The study has been approached in two steps. First, the committee conducted a comparative analysis of past assessments that have stated objectives similar to those of the CCSP. Second, the committee identified approaches (in terms of geographic scale, scope, assessment entity, and timing) and products that are most effective for meeting the CCSP's stated objectives for assessments. http://dels.nas.edu/basc/cca/index.shtml

3. Together with Tom Wilbanks, I was co-lead author of Chapter 7 Industry Settlement and Society within WGII Contribution to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. http://www.ipcc-wg2.org We were coauthors of the Summary for Policy Makers and the Technical Summary

4. I was lead and contributing author to the State of the Carbon Cycle Report, a broadly conceived activity designed to provide accurate, unbiased, and policy-relevant scientific information concerning the carbon cycle in North America to a broad range of stakeholders. http://cdiac.ornl.gov/SOCCR/

5. As member of the Mexican Carbon Program Scientific Committee, I have worked on the human dimensions of the carbon cycle http://flucar.cicese.mx/programamexicanodelcarbono.htm . With Dennis Ojima and Ben De Jong, I coordinated diverse break out sessions and discussions within the Joint Canada-Mexico-USA Carbon Program Planning Meeting

http://www.nacarbon.org/cgi-nacp/2007 . The goal is to launch a join research Agenda, which might focus on the following research topics: a) regional case studies on emission pathways and their drivers. The aim is to find out both commonalities and specificities of each region and to build business as usual and alternative scenarios; b) tri-national trade and carbon embedded in such commodities as fossil fuels, food and timber; c) societal vulnerability to direct and indirect carbon-related impacts (e.g. changes in ecosystems, climate change) and d) set of case studies on existing managing strategies at the state and local level of the three countries and on alternative management tools.

7. I was co-organizer with Andrea Jay (NOAA Earth Systems Research Laboratory) of a Special Session on Human Dimensions of Climate Variability and Change in the Americas at the joint meeting of the American Geophysical Union and the Mexican Geophysical Union in Acapulco in late May 2007. The session has been selected as a Union session http://www.agu.org/meetings/ja07/?content=program