Date: Sept. 27, 2019, 9 am – 5 pm ET
Location: Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice, 320 East 43rd Street, New York City

Note: Due to high demand, a live stream of the conference will be made available.

Access Live Stream

Contact:

Tyler Roush, tylerr@landesa.org
Solina Kennedy, skennedy@law.columbia.edu

Climate change threatens to dramatically alter people’s relationship to land, with severe consequences for how we live, grow food, and access water and natural resources. Meanwhile, many climate solutions are themselves land-intensive, including solar and wind energy, carbon dioxide removal, and finding places for people displaced by climate change to live and grow food, thus potentially increasing competition for land.

Understanding the intersection between global land use, climate change, and human rights is essential for our efforts to confront this looming crisis. For this reason, the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI), the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Landesa, the New York City Bar Association International Environmental Law Committee, and Wake Forest Law School have organized a conference on Friday, Sept. 27 to explore the links between land use, the climate crisis and clean energy transition, and human rights.

This conference will analyze the critical role that land plays in achieving climate solutions, the degree to which climate change may reshape regional abilities to support sustainable ecosystems, and the ways in which these land and climate interactions might affect land rights, human rights, and achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

In particular, the conference will focus on:

• The necessity of land for many climate solutions, such as renewable energy, metals for energy efficient solutions, and carbon storage and sequestration;
• The increasing tension between insecure land tenure for communities reliant on land and climate solutions tied to land, as well as the potential for climate solutions to increase socially inclusive land uses;
• The consequences of climate-driven land scarcity and climate-solution land demands; and
• Sustainable and equitable solutions to some of the most challenging land-centric climate change issues, such as relocation of displaced persons and activities

For more information, including a list of panelists, click here