Climate Change and Risk Management in Africa:
examples from the Sahel and Rwanda

SPEAKER:
Dr. Asher Siebert
Postdoctoral Research Scientist
International Research Institute for Climate and Society
Columbia University

Wednesday, November 9, 2016
1:00 pm to 1:45 pm
1022 HN

Biography: Asher Siebert is currently a postdoctoral research scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University. His current work involves seasonal forecasting, downscaling and climate risk management primarily in East Africa broadly and more specifically, Rwanda. From February 2015 to May 2016, he was a postdoctoral research associate with the Princeton Environmental Institute’s Climate Futures initiative and worked with an interdisciplinary team on issues connected to modeling economically optimal carbon tax policy.

He completed his PhD at Rutgers in Geography (with NJ state climatologist David Robinson as advisor) in January 2015. His dissertation explored the long-term potential of index insurance as a financial adaptation in the context of climate change in the geographic context of the West African Sahel. While a PhD student, he developed and taught a course on Climate and Society at Rutgers and won the Paper of the Year award from the Climate Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers. He is an author of six peer-reviewed publications and over 20 conference proceedings. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in Geosciences from Princeton, an MA in Climate and Society from Columbia University.