Speaker
John H. Matthews, PhD
Executive Director
Alliance for Global Water Adaptation (AGWA)
Following a USGS postdoc, John started and led WWF’s freshwater climate adaptation program in 2007 before co-founding the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation (AGWA) in 2010, where he remains the Executive Director. He has led the development of a variety of new climate risk methodologies that have been used in dozens of countries, prepared green bond criteria that have certified more than 15 billion USD in water resilience investments across six continents, and advised well over 100 countries on their national climate commitments. Current work includes developing a new generation of resilience indicators, leading the development and implementation of a national climate planning tool, working with businesses to incorporate resilience within operations, heading a program to engage macroeconomic planners and central bankers to blend resilience with traditional economic evaluation approaches, and contributing to large-scale technical climate risk assessments.
Description
Climate change impacts are widely understood to be disruptive, primarily through expressions of the water cycle. However, uncertainties about how hydrological change will continue to evolve are also testing long-standing assumptions of how we best study, manage, value, pay for, and govern water resources. Long-standing measures of effective water management such as efficiency, optimization, sustainability, conservation, and reliability are at best weak indicators of climate adaptation. Water resilience is an emerging approach to develop systemic solutions to current and future climate threats. This talk will describe some of the outlines of water resilience that have been appearing globally, across a wide range of institutions. As new insights are embodied in decision making systems, we will explore how we can accelerate research and implementation to match the growing scope of the challenges we face.
Learning Objectives
- Distinguish between water resilience and water sustainability.
- Describe how climate change is disrupting long-standing assumptions about water management.
- Identify evidence-based tools and frameworks to support institutional uptake of climate adaptation and resilience.
Webinar Recording & PDH Certificate
Included with your webinar registration is access to a recording of the program and a fillable certificate to self-report your Professional Development Hour (PDH)/Continuing Education Credit (CEU). Your certificate will be available to download and a link to the recording of this webinar will be sent within a week of the live program from [email protected]. The recording is exclusively for you, the registrant of the webinar. They are not to be shared or forwarded.