A Conversation With Debra Roberts

Debra Roberts, head of the Sustainable and Resilient City Initiatives Unit in the eThekwini Municipality (Durban, South Africa) joined Chris Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, for a conversation on the IPCC, climate adaptation and more.
Recorded May 6, 2021
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Debra Roberts was selected as the city’s first Chief Resilience Officer in 2013. Roberts was a lead author of Chapter 8 (Urban Areas) of Working Group II’s contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). She was elected as Co-Chair of Working Group II for the IPCC’s sixth assessment cycle in 2015. She was also a lead negotiator for the South African delegation involved in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations until December 2015, and a member of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network Thematic Group on Sustainable Cities involved in mobilizing international support for the creation of a city focused SDG (SDG11). She is an Honorary Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in the School of Life Sciences and has been an advisor to the Global Commission on Adaptation, United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) and the United Nations Secretary General’s 2019 Climate Summit. In 2019 she was included in a list of the World’s 100 Most Influential People in Climate Policy.

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Extremely useful discussion. The need for specialized solutions for rapidly growing cities of Africa is vital. Educating young scientists about these areas is also key to expanding climate science. I firmly agree that local, individuals actions can stack up to have a long way and eventually become a meningful contribution to the broader picture. Looking forward to seeing more attention to such essential topics in future discussions! Thanks.