September 19 | Noon – 1:00 PM ET

Co-sponsored by Climate Week at Penn (Running from September 18-22, 2023)

The 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2022 decided to establish new funding arrangements for assisting developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate-related loss and damage. However, the decision did not specify which countries are “particularly vulnerable”. This talk will revisit the difficulty in identifying countries in this way, how vulnerability has factored into past allocation decisions, and why the use of quantitative indicators should be approached with caution.

Dr. Michael Weisberg is Bess W. Heyman President's Distinguished Professor and Chair of Philosophy, as well as Senior Faculty Fellow and Director of Post-Graduate Programs at Perry World House. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of Biology and Philosophy, advisor to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Nairobi Work Programme, climate advisor to the Republic of Maldives, and directs Penn’s campus-wide research in Galápagos. He is the author of Simulation and Similarity: Using Models to Understand the World and Galápagos: Life in Motion, as well as a contributing author to the IPCC's 6th Assessment Report. Much of Professor Weisberg’s research is focused on how highly idealized models and simulations can be used to understand complex systems. He also leads efforts to better understanding the interface between humans and wildlife, between humans and the climate system, and how scientific issues are understood by communities in the Americas and in East Asia. Professor Weisberg received a B.S. in Chemistry and a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of California, San Diego in 1999, and continued graduate study in Philosophy and Evolutionary Biology at Stanford University, earning a 2003 Ph.D. in Philosophy. 

Dr. Stacy-ann Robinson is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Colby College, having held appointments at Yale University, Brown University, and the University of Pennsylvania (Perry World House). She researches the human, social and policy dimensions of climate change adaptation in small island developing states, with a special focus on adaptation finance and climate justice. She was a Contributing Author to Chapter 15 (Small Islands) of Working Group II’s contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report, which was released in February 2022. Her work has appeared in Nature, Nature Climate Change, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, Climate Policy, and other leading journals. Outside of academia, Dr Robinson has 15 years’ experience in the government, nonprofit, and private sectors, including time spent representing the Government of Jamaica in the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) of the United Nations General Assembly and the International Seabed Authority.

Dr. Stephen Hammer serves as Advisor, Global Partnerships and Strategy, to the WBG’s Vice President for Sustainable Development and the Global Director of the WBG’s Climate Change team.  Dr. Hammer leads the Bank’s engagement on climate change issues with the United Nations, the G7, and the G20, and other development partners.  He previously served as the Bank’s Manager of Climate Policy, where his team had responsibility for shaping the WBG’s global perspective on climate change policy, mainstreaming climate change into Bank Group operations, and delivering specialized technical advisory services to clients. Prior to joining the climate team, Dr. Hammer led the Bank’s global work on cities and climate change issues, working extensively in Vietnam, Ethiopia, Romania, and Egypt.  Between 2005 and 2013, he taught full-time at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Columbia University, where his courses and research focused on urban energy systems policy and technology and how climate change will affect different urban systems. While teaching in New York, Dr. Hammer served as an advisor to then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s PlaNYC initiative. In 2007 he helped co-found and until 2012 served as co-Director of the Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN), a global network of researchers examining climate change from an urban perspective. Dr. Hammer holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics, an M.P.P. from Harvard University, and a B.S. degree from University of California, Davis.