WASHINGTON (November 11, 2024)- COP29 began today in Baku, Azerbaijan and will run through Friday, November 22. Discussion items this year are expected to be finances and countries’ updated national climate action plans under the Paris agreement.
Leaders from all around the world gather to discuss climate action in an increasingly warming planet as 2024 is shaping up to be the hottest year on record.
Faculty experts at the George Washington University are available to offer insight, commentary and analysis on the upcoming summit and core themes to come out of the meetings in Azerbaijan. If you would like to schedule an interview, please contact GW Media Relations at [email protected].
GW Delegation
Caitlin Grady, associate professor of engineering management and systems engineering, studies the form and functions of interconnected infrastructure across water, food, and energy systems. Her research seeks to combine network models, socio-technical data, and ethical-epistemic analyses to create a more sustainable and secure environment. Current projects include modeling embedded nitrogen trade and its influence on water quality, climate change impacts on hydropower and the U.S. electricity grid, and managing critical infrastructure under uncertainty.
Grady is leading a delegation of GW representatives to COP29 this year and will be on the ground in Baku next week. She is tracking the climate finance discussions closely.
Climate Change
Robert Orttung, research professor of International Affairs and director of research at Sustainable GW. Orttung is leading two National Science Foundation grants focused on promoting urban sustainability in the Arctic and is serving as the editor of the forthcoming Sustaining Russia’s Arctic Cities. He can discuss a number of topics related to climate change and the Arctic.
Rachael Jonassen, associate research professor, Sustainable Urban Planning Program and Director of the Climate Change and Greenhouse Gas Management Program in the Environmental and Energy Management Institute at George Washington University. Jonassen has nearly 3 decades of experience in developing and applying climate downsizing techniques.
Susan Anenberg is director of the GW Climate & Health Institute and associate professor of environmental and occupational health. Her research focuses on the health implications of air pollution and climate change. Recently her team published two studies finding links between health problems like asthma and exposure to polluted air.
Gaige Kerr is a senior research scientist and professorial lecturer in the department of environmental and occupational health at the GW Milken Institute School of Public Health. He researches ambient air pollution, and projects he has led span topics ranging from understanding the emission sources of pollution to assessing the health impacts experienced by populations, with a special emphasis on understanding associated ethnoracial and socioeconomic disparities.
Law
Robert Glicksman, J.B. and Maurice Shapiro Professor of Environmental Law is an expert in environmental, natural resources and administrative law. Glicksman has written about and can speak to alternative ways to allocate regulatory authority, climate change, federalism issues in environmental law, the challenges facing the federal and land management agencies, and environmental enforcement.
Business
Jorge E. Rivera is a professor of Strategic Management and Public Policy and Tucker-Endowed Fellow at the George Washington University School of Business. Rivera’s research focuses on studying how external environment factors are associated with business sustainability management strategies. He has been examining how nature’s adversity conditions affect corporate adaptation and mitigation to climate change, and how natural disasters and industrial accidents affect foreign investment location by multinational corporations. One of the key focuses of Rivera’s 2022 book, titled “Business Adaptation to Climate Change,” is on firms’ response to natural disasters exacerbated by climate change. His areas of expertise include business and public policy, environmental management, and environmental policy.
John Forrer, associate research professor of strategic management & public policy, is the director of the Institute for Corporate Responsibility at the GW School of Business. Current research project topics include: impact investing, ESG standards in emerging markets, carbon credits and offsets, ESG as a form of global governance, peace bonds, circular economy and fast fashion, and sustainable cocoa supply chains. He teaches courses on impact investing, business government relations, and public private partnerships. He has studied Green Budgeting by countries with the aim of spending public funds to reduce carbon emissions as well as different approaches to carbon credits and voluntary carbon markets, where corporations procure such carbon credits.
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