Birte Holst Jørgensen
Managing Director of Nordic Energy Research.
Susan Leschine
Professor in microbiology at the University of Massachusetts.
Martin Parry
A specialist on the effects of climate change, Martin Parry is Chair of Working Group II of the Intergovermental Panel on Climate (IPCC) which is concerned with impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. Prior to that he has been Professor of Geography at the Universities of Oxford, University College London, Birmingham and East Anglia. He has won a number of awards, including the Order of the British Empire in 1998 for services to the environment and the World Meteorological Organisation's Gerbier-Mumm International Award in 1993 for contributions to research on climate change.
Coleen Vogel
Coleen Vogel, Professor of Sustainability at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Martin Parry
Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Task Group on Scenarios for Climate Impact Assessment
Martin Parry sees two main challenges in the near future in relation to climate change.
Biotechnological solutions are important because some farming systems, which have developed in tune with current climate, cannot easily be modified to adapt to climate change without the help of biotechnology. In some parts of the world we must expect new climates that don’t exist anywhere else and for which crop plants have not naturally developed, because their environment hasn’t existed. So biotechnology can help do two things. Firstly, it can protect against the negative impacts. This means we need for example drought resistance crops. Secondly, we need crops that can take advantage of the potential benefits. For instance, warming in the mid- to high-mid latitudes will result in longer growing seasons and longer light conditions.