Judy Lawrence
Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington
Dr Judy Lawrence is Adjunct Professor at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington based at the Climate Change Research Institute and the Antarctic Research Centre. She is also Director of PS Consulting. Judy has had a long career in the public service in senior policy roles across environment and social policy. For the last 20 years her research and consultancy has focused on usable science and tools for decision making including on sea-level rise, coastal hazards, flooding and water infrastructure with local, regional and national governments and global networks. Judy has developed the uptake and use in New Zealand of Dynamic Adaptive Pathways Planning for decision making under uncertainty and mentors post graduate students and strategy advisors in electricity and water utilities and local government. She was co-author of the Coastal Hazards and Climate Change Guidance 2017 and 2024. Judy was a Coordinating Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report 2022. She was a co recipient of the Prime Minister’s 2019 Science Prize with the Ice and Rising Seas team and was a finalist in the 2019 Welly Awards and the 2020 Westpac Women of Influence Awards. Judy is also a Climate Change Commissioner.
Climate change: the circuit breaker in a rapidly changing world
Judy will set out the role that climate change can play as a catalyst for operating in a rapidly changing world. She will outline how we have got to interia in responses to adapting to climate change and how a new framing of our relationship to water and land from a changing risk perspective can lead us to different pathways that enable us to move forward by anticipating change. The presentation will draw from Judy's collective body of practice and scholarship developed through her relationships with New Zealand and international colleagues.