TCC #5: Biodiversity and Climate Change
In cooperation with the Brandeis Environmental Studies Program, the University of Mannheim, and the African Climate and Environment Center.
About the Event
Join us for our fifth transatlantic climate conversation (TCC) and our first in cooperation with our third partner- AFAS - the African Climate and Environment Center - Future African Savannas, a cooperation between the Universities of Bonn/Cologne, the University of Nairobi, Kenya and Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Abidjan, Ivory Coast, one of the DAAD's Global Centres for Climate and Environment.
About the Speakers
Michael Bollig is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne where his key interests lie in the environmental anthropology of sub-Saharan Africa. His current research projects
focus on the social-ecological dynamics connected to large-scale conservation projects, the commodification of nature and the political ecology of pastoralism. He is the author of Shaping the African Savannah. From Capitalist Frontier to Arid Eden in Namibia (2020), Risk Management in a Hazardous Environment (2006), co-author of African Landscapes (2009) with O. Bubenzer, Pastoralism in Africa (2013) with M. Schnegg and H.P. Wotzka, and Resilience and Collapse in African Savannahs (2017) with D. Anderson. Together with Franz Krause he just published "Environmental Anthropology. Fields of Engagement and Contemporary Challenges" (2023), an introduction into the disciplinary field containing chapters on climate change, biodiversity loss and the anthropocene.
Charles C. Chester teaches global environmental politics at Brandeis University and is a co-Principal Investigator of EMIGRA, an NSF-funded research group examining the role of migratory species in providing ecosystem services and equitable outcomes for people. He is currently building the website, EarthWeb.info, a web-guide to environment, conservation & sustainability, and he currently serves as the Chair of the Board of Bat Conservation International (BCI) and as Chair of the Yellowstone to Yukon (Y2Y) Council (and is a former Co-Chair of the Y2Y Board). He co-edited the volume Conservation & Climate Change: Landscape and Seascape Science, Planning and Action (Island Press 2012) and authored Conservation Across Borders: Biodiversity in an Interdependent World (Island Press 2006). His long-term book project involves the interwoven histories of gorilla conservation, area-based conservation, settler colonialism, climate change, American taxidermy, and European royalty.
Namakau Muyumbana is a young scientist in the employ of the university of Zambia, Lusaka. She holds a Master of Science in Environmental Science with specialisation in Limnology and Wetlands Management. Her MSc thesis assessed the impacts of large dams on dissolved oxygen and greenhouse gas dynamics in a Kafue River, one of Zambia’s largest tributaries to the Zambezi River. Namakau is passionate about conservation of freshwaters and their biodiversity and water quality related topics. Namakau aspires to grow professionally and academically as an expert in macroinvertebrate ecology, to promote holistic approaches in studies of freshwater systems in Zambia. She is also keen on understanding how climate change shapes biodiversity in these systems.