Annual Meeting 2024

Meeting Overview

IonE’s Annual Meeting is happening Friday, September 27, 2024! Kick-off the new academic year with an engaging and inspiring day of talks, workshops, and opportunities to connect with other members of the IonE community. Join us as we amplify the people and stories driving IonE into its bold new strategic vision.

Keynote

The Road to Baku: A Panel on Adaptation, Finance, and Human Rights – A conversation with UMN experts about global climate dialogues.

For years, the University of Minnesota has sent observer delegations and participants to the United Nations’ international climate conferences, as well as human rights summits and other international proceedings. Join us for a panel featuring three UMN experts who’ve attended and participated in these critical global dialogues. Our conversation will cover climate finance, adaptation indicators, and human rights, through a justice lens – all key issues on the road to COP29 in Baku this fall – along with ways our broader community can engage with these international forums. Join us for a panel, moderated by Beth Mercer-Taylor (IonE), featuring three UMN experts.

Amanda Lyons (Human Rights Center, Law School) will share her insights about human rights and climate justice; is the COP29 process and conference in Baku an opportunity to cross silos and advance human rights-based approaches to the climate crisis? Lyons is Executive Director of the Human Rights Center at the UMN Law School; she is a specialist in international human rights law and advocacy, and her work focuses on rights-based approaches to economic, environmental, and gender justice.

Hear from Susanna Gibbons (Carlson School) on climate finance, including ongoing debate about its meaning and deployment. Could a carbon price get companies to internalize emissions costs and benefit vulnerable communities? Gibbons, CFA, is director of the Funds Enterprise at the Carlson School; she more than 30 years of industry experience across multiple asset classes and is currently exploring the integration of ESG principles into decision making.

Nfamara Dampha (The Earth Economy Modelers, CFANS) will discuss adaptation, including indicators that need to be developed to track progress towards the new Global Climate Resilience Goal and indicators that could reduce climate vulnerability. Dampha is a Lead Climate Negotiator at UNFCCC and served as IonE’s Research Scientist in Natural Capital and Ecosystem Services before accepting a new role (starting 9/23) as Lead Scientist and Research Director for NatCap TEEMs (The Earth Economy Modelers).