Hunter's William Solecki Appointed as an Author of Major Climate Change Report

William Solecki, professor of geography at Hunter College and founding director of the CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities, has been selected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve on a team of experts who will prepare a new special report on the impacts of global warming. The IPCC, established in 1988 under the auspices of the United Nations, currently comprises 195 member countries and a worldwide pool of experts who come together to provide the world with clear scientific assessments of climate change, its potential environmental effects, and options for addressing them.

This upcoming report, slated to be delivered in September of 2018, will examine the impacts of global warming above 1.5º Celsius, the threshold determined and advocated at the Paris Climate Conference last December. It will bring together 86 experts from 39 countries, chosen from a field of more than 500 nominations, to study the available research and scientific literature, and to determine the options available to quell the threat of climate change, encourage sustainable development, and eradicate world poverty.

Solecki, a co-chair on the New York City Panel on Climate Change and Hunter faculty member since 2003, is a renowned expert on climate studies and urban sustainability. He has lectured nationally and internationally, been published in numerous scientific journals and textbooks, and received dozens of major research grants.

On March 1, Solecki will be at the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College with Joanne Witty to discuss the ways in which the Brooklyn Bridge Park has transformed a decrepit industrial waterfront into a public space that is both a reflection and an engine of Brooklyn’s resurgence in the twenty-first century.