The recently released IPCC Special Scientific Report, “Global Warming of 1.5°C” highlighted the historically unprecedented scale of the changes required in energy, land, urban and industrial systems to achieve the 1.5 degrees limit and the enormity of the additional climate impacts we can expect if we are unsuccessful in doing so. As bad as the projected impacts are, the actual impacts may be significantly worse due to the likelihood that warming will generate cascading hazards on various temporal and spatial scales. In his presentation, Dr Glasser will describe some attributes of cascading hazards and propose some steps to reduce the associated disaster risk.

Dr Glasser was until recently the Special Representative of the Secretary General for Disaster Risk Reduction, Assistant Secretary General and Head of the United Nations Office of Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR). He was also a member of the Secretary General’s Senior Management Group and the Deputy Secretary General’s Climate Principals Group.

Before joining the UN he was the Secretary General of CARE International, one of the world’s largest non-governmental humanitarian organisations. From 2003-2007, Dr Glasser was the Chief Executive of CARE Australia. Prior to joining CARE he was Assistant Director General at the Australian Government aid agency (AusAID) where his responsibilities at various times ranged from South East Asia programs, the Papua New Guinea bilateral programme to Corporate Policy and Infrastructure and Environment.

Dr Glasser was previously a board member of the Global Call for Climate Action (GCCA), a global alliance of more than 450 national and international organisations focusing on climate change advocacy and he was the Inaugural Board Chairman of the CHS International Alliance, a new organisation resulting from the merger of People in Aid and the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership (HAP). His other previous activities include Advisory Panel member of the Climate Vulnerability Monitor; member of the Principals Steering Group of the United Nations Transformative Agenda for Humanitarian Action; and member of the Project Steering Group for the World Economic Forum project on The Future Role of Civil Society.