Join us for this panel with
Ambassador Tareq MD. Ariful Islam
Deputy Permanent Representative
Permanent Mission of Bangladesh to the United Nations
Dakota Fisher
Former Resilience Program Specialist
Office of Community Development, Disaster Recovery Unit
State of Louisiana
Kobi Ruthenberg
Associate Director
ORG Permanent Modernity
Closing Remarks by
Alexandra Villaseñor
Climate Activist
Co-founder of US Youth Climate Strike, Founder of Earth Uprising
Moderated by
Risa Perlmutter Goldstein
Partner
The Goldstein Partnership, Architects & Planners
5:30 p.m. | Registration
6:00 - 7:30 p.m. | Program with Q+A
The Auditorium
Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall
66 West 12th Street
New York, NY 10011
General Admission: FREE
UNA-NYC is excited to sponsor this special panel on climate migration issues, in collaboration with The Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at The New School, and The Bard Globalization and International Affairs. This panel is held in advance of the global climate actions taking place from September 20-27, a week-long movement which will surround the UN Climate Summit.
Throughout the week the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice will also take hundreds of actions around the world, calling for the transformation of the energy system. To promote climate justice, on September 20 millions will walk out of homes and workplaces onto the streets and demand an end to the age of fossil fuels.
Climate change reshapes the patterns of migration and displacement. We believe in everyone’s right to move safely and legally, and in everyone’s right of movement as a way of coping with the worst impacts of climate change.
Climate migration refers to the displacement of populations, forced by the effects of climate change. While in the New York area we tend to think this takes place only in far away places, the United States joins countries around the world that are dealing with these issues.
This evening, the guest panelists will present local, national, and global endeavors that are currently underway, including the first Federally-funded climate migration effort in the United States: the relocation of the indigenous people of the Isle de Jean Charles. The conversation is an international one. The panelists will discuss how lessons are being learned, ideas exchanged, and how all of this is now forming the basis for ongoing policies and decisions.
Above photos: Isle de Jean Charles, Lousiana
Guest Panelists
AMBASSADOR TAREQ MD. ARIFUL ISLAM
Mr. Tareq Md. Ariful Islam is Deputy Permanent Representative to the Permanent Mission of Bangladesh to the United Nations, since August 2016.
In his diplomatic career, he has gained diverse experience in bilateral, regional and multi-lateral diplomacy, serving in different capacities in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Dhaka, and in the Deputy High Commission of Bangladesh in Kolkata, India. He was also appointed in an earlier engagement in the Permanent Mission of Bangladesh to the United Nations in New York. He takes a special interest in the fields of regional cooperation, migration and human rights.
Mr. Islam holds a Master in Diplomacy and International Trade from Monash University, Australia and a Bachelor of Engineering (Civil) from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.
DAKOTA FISHER
Dakota Fisher is the Senior GIS Analyst for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office (DAO). In this role he works as a member of a collaborative team of researchers, attorneys and analysts who have been tasked with increasing the analytical capabilities of District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office. Dakota leads a team of three analysts who are charged with management of projects, statistical analyses, data development and predictive analytics. He also leverages the countless number of hours he has spent engaging diverse communities throughout his career to help his office better engage with the public. Dakota believes that a better informed, empowered public will result in better outcomes.
Prior to joining the DAO Dakota spent nearly five years working as an urban planner in Louisiana where he focused his work on climate-change adaptation and resilience. As Resilience Programs Specialist with the Louisiana Office of Community Development (OCD), Dakota directly advised the Resilience Policy and Program Administrator, as well as OCD's executive leadership, on Louisiana’s $17 billion disaster recovery portfolio, specifically as programs and policies may be tailored to account for future disaster risk and the incorporation of resilience-building adaptation strategies. His most notable achievement was the management of two nationally known resilience-building projects, Louisiana’s Strategic Adaptations for Future Environments (LA SAFE) and the Resettlement of Isle de Jean Charles. Totaling $92.6 million, these projects lead the resilience field with groundbreaking approaches to community engagement and climate induced relocation. His experiences have taken him from the bayous of the Gulf Coast to the UN campus in Bonn, Germany.
Dakota holds a master's degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of New Orleans and a bachelor's degree in Sociology and Criminology with a minor in Geography from Louisiana State University. He is an active member of the American Planning Association (APA), Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA), and the United States Green Building Council (USGBC).
KOBI RUTHENBERG
Kobi Ruthenberg, BArch, SMarchS, is an Associate Director at ORG. His work focuses at the intersection of large-scale systems and forms of urban development and ranges from spatial analytics to planning and implementation. At ORG, Ruthenberg heads the New York office with a diverse set of projects globally. Recent and ongoing projects include; a national spatial plan for Malawi, a mobility-tech study for Belgium, the Regional Plan Association’s Fourth Plan for the New York metropolitan area, industrial innovation masterplans along the Brooklyn waterfront, a resiliency masterplan for Jersey City, and the award-winning ’New Meadowlands’ Rebuild by Design project, developed at the MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism (CAU) post Hurricane Sandy for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
Ruthenberg obtained his post-professional Masters in Architecture and Urbanism at MIT in 2013 and his Bachelors in Architecture from the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) in 2008. Before joining the firm, Kobi was a research fellow at the MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism, specializing in resiliency planning. He also practiced both in architecture and urbanism, in Israel, China and the U.S. He was a lecturer in Urban Design at Northeastern University and a visiting design critic at several architecture and planning schools in the U.S.
Closing Remarks
ALEXANDRIA VILLASEÑOR
Alexandria Villaseñor is a 14 year old climate activist living in New York City. Frustrated by the lack of progress at COP 24, and inspired by 16 year old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, Alexandria began her own solo weekly school strike for climate in front of the United Nations Headquarters on December 14, 2018 and has been on strike every Friday ever since.
Soon after she began, Alexandria became a national and international Fridays for Future organizer for the first ever global youth climate strike which occurred on March 15, 2019. This historic strike mobilized 1.6M youth from 123 countries to demand climate action from their world leaders.
For her work, Alexandria was given the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival's "Disruptor" award, The Common Good Foundation’s Changemaker Scholarship, the Earth Day Network 2019 Youth Climate Leadership Award. She recently made Politico's list of the top 100 people influential in climate change policy.
Today, Alexandria continues to organize national weekly Fridays for Future climate strikes and is a leading organizer for the ongoing global Fridays for Future Climate Strikes. She is also the founder and executive director of her own nonprofit “Earth Uprising” where she is working to bring accurate climate change education into schools and helping youth mobilize for direct action.
Personally, Alexandria stands for a 50% reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, as outlined in the October 2018 IPCC Special Report. She intends to continue her school strikes, climate activism and direct action until this goal is reached.
Read the TeenVogue article about Alexandria Villaseñor here
Moderator
RISA PERLMUTTER GOLDSTEIN
Risa Perlmutter Goldstein, RA, PP, Partner, leads the Sustainable Planning Department for the Goldstein Partnership Architects & Planners. Founded in 1953, the firm is among the longest established in the region and from the start has been known for its dedication to sustainable design.
She has been both a licensed Architect and Professional Planner for 3 decades. For seven of these years she was an Executive with a Partnership of 3 major East Coast real estate redevelopment firms, for whom she orchestrated redevelopment of NYC and NJ sites including the MOTBY Peninsula in Bayonne, NJ, then the largest undeveloped site in New York Harbor.
Risa is committed to combining Resilient and Sustainability Planning with Urban Design. Bringing her understanding of what motivates the private sector, she leads planning initiatives for Public clients. She provided expertise in sustainable land use planning to the crafting of Jersey City’s Resiliency Master Plan and Adaptation Master Plan, resulting in revisions to Land Use Ordinances, Capital Improvement plans, and approval procedures. In 2018 she spoke at the ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability Congress in Bonn, Germany on the topic of Incentivizing the Private Sector to adopt sustainable building practices by choice.
Risa serves on the board of the UK-based Ecological Sequestration Trust, formed in 2011 to demonstrate at city-region scale how to create a step change in improving energy, water, food security in the face of the combined challenges of changes of climate, demography and increasing resource-scarcity.
She holds both a BA in Design of the Environment, and a Masters in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania.
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