There is no more possible denying the impacts of climate change. Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent, average temperatures increasing and so is the potential for other consequences such as global pandemics.
As a society, adaptation is urgently required to ensure our own survival. So called ‘Climate adaptation’, refers to changes made in ecological, but also social and economic systems, in prevention of, or, in response to, climate change impacts.
At RWI we aim to help countries become less vulnerable and more resilient by carrying out projects and research on climate change adaption. Since there is no ‘one fits all’ solution; our projects are designed to find the best way to support our partners in their development of adaptation mechanisms, all while promoting human rights and equality.
Matthew Scott
Matthew Scott is senior researcher and leader of the Human Rights and the Environment thematic area at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. He is also associate professor and adjunct senior lecturer at the Faculty of Law at Lund University. His work focuses on integrating social science perspectives with international legal standards to promote context-sensitive, human rights-based law, policy and practice relating to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. This work is guided by the Framework for Integrating Rights and Equality (FIRE), which he has pioneered through a series of collaborations with academic and development partners in Asia-Pacific, Africa and Europe. His primary area of expertise concerns human mobility in the context of disasters and climate change, on which he has published widely. Current research and programming interests concern urban climate-related human mobility, building resilience to pandemic risk, and rights-based climate adaptation using the FIRE framework.
He holds a PhD in Public International Law from Lund University and a MA in Social Anthropology of Development from SOAS. He practiced immigration and asylum law in London before entering academia. He is a member of the advisory committee of the Platform on Disaster Displacement and the editorial board of the Yearbook of International Disaster Law, and a founding member of the Nordic Network on Climate Related Displacement and Mobility and the Asia-Pacific Academic Network on Disaster Displacement.
At Lund University he convenes the introduction to human rights law course and the short course on human rights law, the environment and climate change on the LLM in international human rights law programme. He also lectures on the MSc programme in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.
For further updates on his research, please refer to his Research profile:
https://portal.research.lu.se/en/persons/matthew-scott
Claudia Ituarte-Lima
Dr. Claudia Ituarte-Lima is Leader of the Human Rights and the Environment thematic area and senior researcher at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law.
She is an international public lawyer and scholar with direct experience in international law and policy making. For the last 20 years, she has worked on human rights and environmental law (in particular biodiversity and climate change). She holds a PhD (University College London) and a MPhil (University of Cambridge).
Her work unites legal analysis and sustainability science for examining environmental and human rights governance challenges and innovative levers to address them. She has bridged the human rights and biodiversity “communities of practice” through leading research such in the Biodiversa project on safeguarding ecosystems and human rights through law and regulation. She has also experience designing multiactor dialogue processes and blended learning courses for judges, National Human Rights Institutions, environmental human rights defenders and United Nations staff. Her research expertise is complemented by her experiential learning by living in Sweden, Mexico, Kenya, Japan and Canada and the Peruvian and Ecuadorian Amazon region.
Dr. Ituarte-Lima has analysed the interplay between laws at distinct geographical scales. Her research ranges from empirically-based case studies in Latin America, Southeast Asia and Eastern Africa, to legal analysis examining the interactions between international legal regimes in particular between the Convention on Biological Diversity, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and international human rights treaties. Her work has been published in English, Spanish, Burmese, Thai, Vietnamese, and Japanese.
She serves as regional deputy director for Latin America of the Global Network on Human Rights and Environment, acts as an expert advisor to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Environment and was a member of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) expert group in policy support tools and methodologies.
Before working at RWI, she worked at the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University and she has held visiting status including at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at University of British Columbia in Canada, the Environmental Change Institute at University of Oxford in the UK, the Global Centre of Excellence Programme in Conflict Studies at Osaka University in Japan, the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) in Ecuador and ECOSUR in Mexico.
For further updates on her research, please refer to her Research profile:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Claudia-Ituarte-Lima
https://portal.research.lu.se/en/persons/claudia-ituarte-lima