Thursday, Oct. 23, 2014   1 -2:30 pm - TOYOTA Auditorium  - Free & Open to the Public!

Our Bandit Future? Cities, Shantytowns, and Climate Change Governance

Colin Crawford, Tulane University Law School & Payson Center for International Development

This talk begins to define a role for cities and their inhabitants in climate change governance. 
In light of the empirical work establishing a connection between urban violence and both 
environmental scarcity and temperature rise, failure to take into account global urbanization 
and its defining characteristics may result in sustained and perhaps intractable urban violence 
and social disintegration.  This discussion explores the normative justifications possible for 
public participation in the climate change adaptation context; considers available models for 
robust public participation in the context of a complicated issue like climate change adaptation; 
evaluates the difficulties of implementing a consistent approach to public participation across 
cultures, geographic differences, and differences in social, economic and political situation; and 
endorses a possible model for public participation in the climate change adaptation context that 
might be both applied regardless of national context and experience.