Human population enters our concerns about climate change both from the beginning and the end of the causal chain: humans have been causing the emissions that trigger the change and its potential impact on the well-being of humans is our main reason for concern. While much of the focus before and around Copenhagen has been on mitigating emissions, this presentation will focus on strategies for strengthening adaptive capacities to unavoidable climate change. The central thesis of the presentation is that strengthening human capacity primarily through education is the most promising investment in view of uncertain but potentially serious climate change impacts. Since international migration is likely to become a key element of adaptive strategies this presentation will give special emphasis to the interactions between human capital formation, migration and integration into new societies.

Professor Wolfgang Lutz is leader of the World Population Program of IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis), Director of the Vienna Institute of Demography (Austrian Academy of Sciences), Professor of Applied Statistics at the WU Vienna and Professorial Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute of Ageing. The work presented in this lecture is part of his recent ERC Advanced Grant on “Forecasting Societies Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change”.