Green Building Council Iceland and Nordic sister organizations discussed important solutions in design and construction. Five experts from Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Denmark discussed solutions and adaptation to climate change.
The event, Resilience and Climate Adaptation, was held by the Green Building Council Iceland in collaboration with its Nordic sister organizations on January 19th. You can watch the conference below. Five presentations were given, covering topics such as the resilience of infrastructure and the necessity of adapting to expected climate change.
As stated in the interim report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published in the autumn of 2021, humanity can no longer prevent climate change caused by greenhouse gases and must therefore prepare to adapt to these changes. The report's content is discussed in the conference's first lecture, delivered by Dr. Guðfinna Aðalgeirsdóttir, a glaciologist and one of the report's lead authors.
Following this, Miisa Tähkänen, a leading expert at the Green Building Council Finland in life cycle assessments, the circular economy, and sustainable business development, discussed the effects of climate change on different regions in Finland and the challenges residents face in adapting to them. Miisa's presentation was followed by a talk from the Norwegian Kim Haukeland Paus, an associate professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), on how to respond to the increased intensity of precipitation that will accompany climate change by redesigning drainage systems.
In the fourth presentation, Alexandra Vindfeld Hansen, a landscape architect from Denmark, discussed methods based on nature-based solutions and showed us examples of designs based on such solutions. Finally, Sigurður Freyr Jónatansson, a financial stability expert at the Central Bank of Iceland, discussed scenario analyses for climate risk and the challenges the financial world faces due to the growing risk of asset depreciation. It is foreseeable that the longer mitigation measures against the climate threat are postponed, the more damage to assets will steadily increase in the future.
The webinar was moderated by Dr. Sigríður Ósk Bjarnadóttir, an assistant professor at the University of Iceland's School of Engineering and Natural Sciences and a board member of the Green Building Council Iceland. All presentations are in English.