The Penn Plant Adaptability and Resilience Center hosted its inaugural symposium “Climate Solutions for the Living World” in the Houston Hall of Flags, bringing together experts from diverse fields to address the challenge of climate change.
The one-day event on Nov. 15 featured 11 faculty speakers who each presented their research and perspectives on topics such as terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, urbanization, energy and climate communication, and sustainable agriculture. As the first event organized by the center, the symposium aimed to celebrate the recent launch of Plant ARC as well as assemble groups who share the goal of mitigating climate change.
“What we're interested in is getting people talking together, identify overlapping ideas, possibly even come up with new ideas, and then figure out ways in which we can synergize,” DiMaura Professor of Biology Doris Wagner, who leads Plant ARC, said.
Associate Professor of City Planning at the Weitzman School of Design Dominic Vitiello spoke at the event on his work in Urban Agriculture and Food System Planning.
“So much of the work on urban agriculture, almost by definition, touches issues of climate sustainability and resilience, such our food supply has been very focused on intersection with urban agriculture and questions about the extent to which urban agriculture can be scaled up,” Vitiello told The Daily Pennsylvanian.
Michael Mann, Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science and director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media, highlighted Penn’s interdisciplinary approach to addressing climate challenges.
“With our twelve schools, Penn is uniquely positioned to advance an interdisciplinary approach to studying and tackling the climate crisis,” Mann said. “We have some of the leading scholars in the world… The challenge is to bring it all together so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and we’re in the process of doing just that here at Penn.”
Mann was named Penn's first vice provost for climate science, policy, and action in October.
Class of 1942 Endowed Term Professor of German and Dutch literature and culture Simon Richter attended the event after organizing Climate Week at Penn, which took place Oct. 14-18. He said he appreciated the value of engaging with diverse perspectives throughout the week.
“I attended 19 events, and what I learned is that when you look at climate change from a whole lot of different perspectives, it actually makes you hopeful — more hopeful than if you just look from your own narrow kind of perspective,” Richter said.
Richter added that the Plant ARC symposium inspired him to integrate new voices into his teaching.
“For my Forest Worlds course, I'm already thinking, ‘I would like to bring this person into the class,’ because I think it's really important for students also to find out about all of these connections,” he said.
College sophomore Maya Miller, who was in attendance at the event, said that she enjoyed the talk about health equity.
“I think it's really important, living in Philadelphia, to recognize the gaps in equity,” Miller said. “I really appreciated the speaker bringing up that concern because I’m interested in environmental justice, like food justice, health justice, and I would be interested in working with them in the future.”
Looking ahead, Plant ARC plans to host additional symposiums, continuing to foster interdisciplinary conversations and collaborations toward shared goals in addressing climate change.
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