Johanna Nalau on moving the climate change agenda from planning to action through brave leadership

Go Simone

Johanna Nalau is an adaptation scientist with a PhD in climate change adaptation at Griffith University based on the Gold Coast, Australia. Her research is focused on understanding how, why and when people make decisions to adapt to climate change, and what role science can and should play in that process. That includes issues such as decision-making, policy development and implementation, limits to adaptation, and the gap that we often see between academic theory and real-world practical actions.

Johanna is one of the Lead Authors for the (IPCC) 6th Assessment report working on the Small Islands topic, and also an Australian Research Council Fellow (2019-2022), and Managing Editor for the Journal of Climate Risk Management. She also leads the Adaptation Science Research Theme at Cities Research Institute at Griffith University. All of these roles focus on understanding the core principles of climate change adaptation, and how adaptation science can play a positive role in evidence-based decision-making.

With Johanna, we talked about Finland, governance in coastal cities, carbon tax, the question of adaptation as a local responsibility, and the need for brave leadership to action climate adaptation.