Welcome to the inaugural Mediterranean City Climate Change Consortium (MC-4) CityAdapt Newsletter from its new home at Loyola Marymount University (LMU) in Los Angeles. We are delighted to serve as the Secretariat and thank our partners at the Council for Watershed Health for their efforts in founding and supporting MC-4 as we continue to enjoy their commitment. Laurel Hunt remains the MC-4 Secretary as a part of her new position here at the LMU Center for Urban Resilience (CURes). With the most recent Mediterranean City Conference in Athens in our rearview mirror, we have the opportunity to reflect on the increasingly important role that globally connected regional networks, like MC-4, have to play in the ongoing challenge of climate change.
The latest publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2014 report sounds the bellweather for humanity to move swiftly towards climate adaptation as mitigation alone will no longer suffice. Adaptation is a means building resilience and adjusting to climate change impacts. At CURes, MC-4 represents one critical initiative in suite toolkit of urban resilience projects. The report also asserts with high confidence that adaptation planning and implementation can be enhanced through complementary actions across levels of intervention. In terms of managing future risks, this means that local actors, in addition to national governments, can be important for scaling up adaptation and managing information and financing. MC-4 stands at the crossroads helping to facilitate this progress.
It is clear from the IPCC report that organizations such as MC-4 have a critical role in developing and implementing adaptations that have deep impacts on the future of our cities. The importance of organizations like MC-4 is certainly growing and will provide us the opportunity to demonstrate leadership and action on the global stage. As MC-4 must also grow and strengthen in order to meet the needs of our cities, our team at CURes stands ready to facilitate this initiative. We look forward to your enhanced participation in our program as we work to define and focus our efforts together. We are delighted to have Laurel Hunt leading the charge and invite you get behind the MC-4 initiative. Climate action is an imperative and MC-4 is a great way forward.
About the Author: Dr. Eric Strauss serves as President’s Professor of Biology at Loyola Marymount University and Executive Director of CURes. With collaborative research specialties in animal behavior, endangered species management, urban ecosystems and science education, Eric has extended the model for faculty scholarship by co-founding the Urban Ecology Institute in Boston while he served as a faculty member at Boston College and CURes in Los Angeles, both of which provide educational, research and restoration programs to underserved neighborhoods and their residents. In addition, Dr. Strauss is the Founding Editor of a web-based peer-reviewed journal, Cities and the Environment, which is funded in part by the USDA Forest Service. He has co-written multi-media textbooks in biology and urban ecology as well as hosting multiple video series on the life sciences and ecology. Dr. Strauss received his B.S. in Mass Communication from Emerson College and Ph.D. in Biology from Tufts University in 1990.