Events

We study how firms steer workers’ adaptation behaviors to the negative impact of climate risks. Using unique data from real-time GPS and AI-enhanced driver-monitoring systems tracking 10,000 truck drivers over 15 months, we show that exposure to extreme heat increases dangerous driving behaviors and reduces productivity.

How do people’s experiences with weather and climate risk shape their beliefs and actions? This talk presents findings from two large-scale projects in Australia examining the behavioural and perceptual impacts of climate-related events.

Recognising climate change as a fundamental financial risk, and with complex reporting requirements and regulatory pressures intensifying, the demand for climate-ready skills is soaring. Our full-day, in-person workshop is designed to provide you with critical insights to meet this challenge head-on.

Green Energy Statecraft for Comprehensive National Security. Research and analysis have highlighted the potential national security benefits of the green energy transition in terms of its economic, social, environmental and geostrategic payoffs. But these components have not been integrated in a strategic new approach to energy transition governance. My colleagues and I call this new approach Green Energy Statecraft, offering it as an ‘ideal type’ conceptual framework for researchers and national decision makers alike to better develop ambitious, strategic and effective green energy policy.

Understand the key issues, tools and principles of climate litigation & risk so you can lead on climate governance and meet legal obligations. This course provides the tools and context needed to navigate climate law frameworks, litigation trends, accounting standards and practice

Join us for the ICRR Conference 2025 - Day 1 - Early Career Researchers Workshop, where PhD Students and Early Career Researchers will come together to present their research on Climate Risk & Response.

Join us for the ICRR Conference 2025 - Day 2 - Industry Forum, where leaders and experts from academia, industry, and government will come together to explore solutions to critical climate risks and discuss emerging challenges and opportunities in Australia’s fast-changing climate landscape.

Identifying options for adapting to a changing climate: The case of East Rennell, Solomon Islands. Pacific Small Island Developing States have a long history of resilience and adaptation to environmental variability, yet their rural communities face a range of chronic threats to the sustainable management of their natural resources. These threats are exacerbated by a rapidly warming climate and new climate-related risks, such as increased incidence of extreme weather events, and sea level rise. The increasing pressures on their natural resources from population growth, tourism development, falling agricultural productivity, and over-harvested fisheries are being magnified and compounded by climate related impacts, including more severe tropical cyclones, ocean acidification, coral bleaching, droughts, increasing coastal inundation, and erosion.

Gain a deep understanding of the behavioural factors that influence climate-related decision-making and discover how to communicate climate risks in a way that builds trust, overcomes resistance, and drives meaningful action.

Gain practical, data-driven insights to understand and address climate risks from an economic and financial perspective. Designed for finance professionals, policymakers, and ESG leaders, this course equips you with tools to integrate climate data into economic decision-making and adapt to evolving regulatory and market conditions.

Develop strategic climate responses within Australian organisational contexts. This course combines real-world case studies, climate governance frameworks, and evidence-based decision-making techniques tailored to Australia's political, policy, and geographic landscape.

Climate Law & Litigation in Australia: Promoting climate accountability or activism? UNSW’s Institute for Climate Risk and Response (ICRR) and Centre for the Future of the Legal Profession (Law & Justice UNSW) will be hosting a panel discussion on the future of climate litigation in Australia - from inside the courtroom and beyond.

Litigation addressing issues of climate change is accelerating, with growing numbers of cases before courts in Australia and internationally. These cases often involve the presentation of scientific evidence about the nature of climate change, its impacts and its link to particular activities or actors. In this seminar, Professor Jacqueline Peel of the University of Melbourne will discuss a number of the most recent climate cases, how science has been used and the implications for both legal practice and liability, and scientific researchers involvement as experts in climate litigation processes.

Calling all PhD students and early career researchers working on climate risk and response! The UNSW Institute for Climate Risk & Response (ICRR) invites you to submit an abstract for day 1 of our 2 day conference, the Early Career Researchers Workshop. The event will be held on Wednesday the 22nd October 2025 at UNSW Sydney campus. This is a unique opportunity to present your research, win up to $600 in cash prizes, connect with peers from diverse disciplines, and contribute to the global dialogue on climate risk and response. Submission deadline: Monday 25th August 2025 12pm AEST.

This seminar presents findings from my PhD research on Australia's emerging offshore wind energy sector. I begin by examining the offshore wind legislative framework established by the Morrison government to enable private development of Australia's substantial wind resources.

The 2nd science-industry workshop on severe convective storms will be held on August 7-8, 2025, at UNSW Sydney, fostering collaboration between scientists and industry.

Join us for the 2nd Economic Impacts of Climate Change (EICC) Workshop hosted by the UNSW Institute for Climate Risk and Response in Sydney CBD on Tuesday the 5th of August.

Recognising climate change as a fundamental financial risk, and with complex reporting requirements and regulatory pressures intensifying, the demand for climate-ready skills is soaring. Our full-day, in-person workshop is designed to provide you with critical insights to meet this challenge head-on.

Investigate the behavioural and political barriers to—and drivers of—climate action. The first session introduces insights for integrating behavioural science into decision-making strategies. The second session provides an overview of the political forces shaping responses to climate change challenges.

Delve into the dynamic realm of climate law and risk management. The first session covers an overview of climate law and current litigation trends in Australia. The second session focuses on climate risk management and accounting, including the implications of Australia’s newly-introduced mandatory climate reporting regime.

Gain insights into the scientific models and economic frameworks underpinning climate risk assessment and responses. The first session provides an overview of global warming projections, focusing on climate extremes, while the second session shifts focus to the expected impact on the economy.

At the Mobiliar Lab we develop tools to assess impacts of riverine and surface water floods. These tools can be used as scenarios for training purposes or for real-time or future risk assessments. In the scClim project, a collaborative project funded by the Swiss Science Foundation, a tool to quantify and predict hail-related impacts on buildings and agriculture was developed.

The ongoing transition to a low-carbon economy creates transition risks and opportunities for firms. This paper demonstrates how transition risks arise from the interaction of several factors, including whether emission reductions are caused by cost-increasing regulations or emission-reducing productivity improvements, a firm’s market structure and production process, and how emissions are emitted throughout a firm’s value chain.

Understanding the uncertainty inherent in climate projections is crucial for robust future planning and decision-making. In this talk I will discuss a series of behavioural experiments examining how people (the general public and climate scientists) interpret identical projected future temperature ranges (e.g., 4°C to 7.2°C by 2100).

Recognising climate change as a fundamental financial risk, and with complex reporting requirements and regulatory pressures intensifying, the demand for climate-ready skills is soaring.

Hailstorms are a well-known summer hazard in many parts of the world, including in our region on Australia’s east coast. Damages caused by hail are a leading contributor to insured losses: hail damages cars, buildings, and crops, and a single hailstorm can cause more than $1b worth of damage. Despite the high damage potential of these storms, and the expectation that climate change will affect severe convective storms, the details of observed and projected changes in hail are difficult to determine, and where known they are often spatially inhomogeneous.

Australia is in the box seat to host the world’s biggest climate event: the COP31 UN climate summit. This could be a transformative moment for climate action. Hosting the UN climate summit is a chance to showcase Australia’s green industry plans and celebrate the climate leadership of Pacific nations. But playing host also comes with high expectations.

The ongoing transition to a low-carbon economy creates transition risks and opportunities for firms. This paper demonstrates how transition risks arise from the interaction of several factors, including whether emission reductions are caused by cost-increasing regulations or emission-reducing productivity improvements, a firm’s market structure and production process, and how emissions are emitted throughout a firm’s value chain. Using a Melitz-style model we show how a firm’s carbon emissions have a complex relationship to its transition risks, such that higher emissions does not necessarily mean higher transition risks, and how commonly used risk metrics can label some firms that would benefit from a transition as ones at risk.

Title: Banking on Resilience: Integrating Climate Risk into Bank Stress Testing This project uses finance factor modelling to quantify banks' exposure to climate risk, offering insights into their resilience to climate change. By pinpointing areas of vulnerability, the project aims to support financial institutions in bolstering their adaptability to climate risks and to guide regulatory updates for a more resilient financial system. Additionally, these insights contribute to developing improved stress-testing frameworks.

The seminar will be chaired by Associate Professor Jonathan Bonnitcha (UNSW Law & Justice) and feature a talk from Professor Lauge Poulsen (University College London), who chairs OECD's work-programme on climate policy and investment treaties.

Join us for the ICRR 2024 Conference where a wide array of professionals from academia, industry and government will convene to discuss emerging key themes, challenges and opportunities in the fast-changing landscape of climate risk and response.

The UNSW Institute for Climate Risk & Response (ICRR) is excited to announce our Early Career Researchers Workshop on Wednesday, 16th October. This event offers PhD students and early career researchers a unique opportunity to share their climate-related research, collaborate with peers, and drive innovation in the field.

Title: Leveraging Historical Data for Climate Prediction In Vietnam: An Imprinting Perspective Abstract: Although data science offers a promising avenue in climate prediction, the lack of adequately downscaled climate projections with diverse local contexts remains a significant challenge. Although history has left behind a wealth of data captured in human archives, there is a discernible gap in understanding how they can be used to develop climate projections. We present a case study of a project that used historical records to develop a long-term climate data series for Vietnam. Our preliminary insights highlight how historical imprints can be leveraged to navigate present uncertainties by synthesizing the past with the present.

Title: Climate Change Diplomacy and Australia’s potential role in shaping the future of the UNFCCC. Australia is currently bidding to host the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC in 2026. If successful, Australia will host COP31 in partnership with the Pacific, creating the first regional COP Presidency. What will this mean for Australia and the region if we’re successful? What will it mean for global climate diplomacy and the future structure of the UNFCCC? Fundamentally, what is a COP and how are they used to shape domestic and international climate ambition?

Using social psychology to understand public responses to climate change and climate migration. Academics and activists are increasingly recognising climate change as not only an environmental and health issue, but also as a justice issue. Those facing its worst consequences typically have not had access to high-emission lifestyles, or the means to adapt to the challenges climate change brings. In this seminar, I will talk about some of the ways that my collaborators and I use social psychology to try to understand how people respond to climate change.

The Macro-Economic Impacts of Weather-Related Disasters and Climate Change. Disasters, such as floods or droughts, and climate change are short-term and long-term meteorological phenomena that are expected to have important economic effects. The measured effects of weather-related disasters on economic activity could be negative or positive depending on how the economy recovers from the disaster.

Confronting the fossil fuel hegemony in an era of climate crisis: The politics of mitigation, adaptation and suffering. Climate change is the most critical issue now facing humanity. As global temperatures rise, floods, fires and storms are becoming more intense and frequent. People are suffering. Yet, despite over 30 years of international climate negotiations, emissions continue to increase and as the UN Secretary-General António Guterres has bluntly stated, “We have a choice. Collective action or collective suicide. It is in our hands.” This seminar presentation provides an overview of how corporations, governments, and civil society organisations have organised past and present climate responses in terms of mitigation, adaptation, and suffering.

Organisations in Australia and abroad are increasingly required to report on their exposure and vulnerability to climate-related physical and transition risks and on the financial effects of these. The accounting standards underpinning such reporting were developed at break-neck speed, however, and are in large part based on the practices and assumptions of financial markets and accounting. This is to be expected – we are trying to solve an urgent problem by employing solutions we are familiar with, but that were never developed with that problem in mind. In this talk I examine some of the tensions that are emerging as practitioners attempt to straddle the boundaries between the climate and accounting. In doing so, I ask – who should the ultimate arbiter be, in determining the criteria, boundaries and definitions by which we account for the financial effects of the climate?

ICRR is partnering with CBA, UTS and the Harvard Star Lab to run a Climate Action Hackathon. The event kicks off at 9am on Thursday 14th March at Commonwealth Bank Place - South Building, 11 Harbour St, Sydney, NSW 2000. There will be talks from leading academics as well as CBA Executives, and a panel discussion, featuring ICRR Director Professor Ben Newell, on trends in science and business around climate action.

Misinformation causes many negative impacts across a range of topics such as climate change and vaccination. Communicating facts – including fact-checking – is one important tool to reduce the damage. Another powerful tool that can neutralise misinformation across topics is critical thinking - explaining misleading rhetorical techniques helps people spot attempts to mislead them, and builds their “immunity” against being misinformed. In this presentation, Dr. John Cook will unpack the best practices on countering misinformation coming out of psychological research and present case studies that apply these principles using digital games and generative AI.

If every individual followed every recommendation from An Inconvenient Truth, global carbon emissions would still be too high to mitigate climate change. This has led some to argue that we should stop focusing on individuals to help solve climate change, and focus exclusively on collective, structural change. In this talk I nuance this argument, drawing on a series of multinational datasets to highlight how inaction on climate change represents an alliance between both individual-level and collective-level vested interests. On a more optimistic note, these insights provide clues about how to accelerate the process of rapid decarbonisation.