Professor Walter Leal Filho (BSc, PhD, DSc, DPhil, DL, DLitt, DEd) is Professor and Head of the Research and Transfer Centre “Sustainable Development and Climate Change Management” at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences in Germany and holds the Chair of Environment and Technology at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He is a Lead Author at AR6´s Working Group II (Climate Change Adaptation) at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), founding editor of the International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management, and heads the International Climate Change Information and Research Programme (ICCIRP). He is also Editor-in-Chief of the Climate Change Management series with Springer. Prof. Walter Leal serves on the editorial board of various journals. He has in excess of 400 publications to his credit, among which are ground-breaking books such as “Universities and Climate Change”, “The Economic, Social and Political Aspects of Climate Change”, the “Handbook of Climate Change Adaptation” and the “Handbook of Climate Change Resilience”. He has nearly 30 years of field experience on project management, and has a particular interest in the connections between sustainability, climate change adaptation, and human behaviour.
Dr. Johannes M. Luetz (BA/USA, MBA/Germany, Ph.D/Australia) is Senior Lecturer, Postgraduate Coordinator and Research Chair at CHC, a bespoke private higher education provider in Brisbane, and Adjunct Academic at UNSW Sydney in the School of Social Sciences, where he also earned his Ph.D. in Environmental Policy and Management with a thesis on forced migration. Dr. Luetz has travelled and consulted extensively for World Vision International on research projects raising awareness of the growing effects of climate change on vulnerable communities in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and the need to meaningfully address vulnerabilities through praxis-informed approaches that work in the real world. He was raised in West Africa and Switzerland, cares deeply about poverty reduction, justice and equity, and has researched, written and published conceptually and empirically in these areas. He is a big picture thinker and has interdisciplinary research interests at the science-policy interface, including in areas of leadership development, climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction, human resilience, the not-for-profit sector, sustainability, ecotheology and social transformation, among others. He heads the “Master of Social Science Leadership” program at CHC, which through its research and teaching activities on change leadership seeks to give rise to comprehensive social transformation.
Dr. Desalegn Ayal is Assistant Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies at the Center for Food Security Studies, College of Development Studies, Addis Ababa University. Desalegn holds a Ph.D. in Geography. Desalegn serves as the Deputy Editor of International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management. He has published more than 30 publications including books, book chapters, and refereed journal articles and is East Africa Vice President for Interconnections for Making Africa Great Empowered and Sustainable Initiative. Desalegn has also presented papers on climate adaptation and related issues at many international and national conferences. His principal areas of research interest include climate change and adaptation, climate resilience, climate change mitigation and related issues, indigenous weather forecasting, integrated natural resources rehabilitation and management, livelihoods, and food security nexus, among others. He thoroughly understands the link between natural and human-induced hazards with sustainable development and works hard to familiarize with current tools of climate change impact assessment on livelihood and the wider environment. Desalegn has been actively involved in climate resilience and integrated natural resources rehabilitation and management research, and development interventions to improve food security.