Klimapolis Symposium

The Klimapolis Symposium will take place in Natal (RN), Brazil, on April 11th and 12th, aiming to bring together researchers from the areas of climatology, architecture and urbanism, social sciences, environment, and life sciences from Brazil and Germany, in addition to representatives from local governments for interdisciplinary discussions on the multi-faceted challenges of urban governance and environment in the context of climate change.

The Klimapolis Symposium overarching topic is “Climate and Environment in Urban Settings: A multi-level Governance Challenge”. Climate change is a significant challenge facing humanity today. Such a problem of global nature and local impact requires not only the application of consolidated technical and scientific knowledge, but also the awareness and engagement of civil society actors to produce new knowledge and implement new models of governance and production of cities.

Cities are particularly vulnerable to climate change due to their unique combination of large and heterogeneous populations, urban hot spots, and complex links between socioeconomic inequality and exposure to risk and vulnerability. Thus, discussions about cities in the context of climate change should consider implicated actors and be permeated by interdisciplinary approaches considering social relations, health, and environmental issues.

​The Klimapolis Symposium is organised by the Klimapolis Laboratory Institute and funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the German Center for Research and Innovation (DWIH), Mack Pesquisa, with support from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, University of Sao Paulo, Mackenzie Presbyterian University, Hamburg University, and HafenCity University Hamburg.

See the event agenda here. The Symposium will be streamed online with both Portuguese and English audio. The streaming links will be available here on the day of the event.