Karen Seto: Urbanization: Solution or Crisis for Climate Change?

Urban areas produce about 75% of greenhouse gas emissions from final energy use but occupy a small land area on Earth. How can cities be part of the climate solution? In this talk, Gund Institute Advisory Board Member Karen Seto draws on the IPCC 5th Assessment Report to discuss how urban areas can mitigate climate change as well as highlight key knowledge gaps.

Karen Seto is the Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science at Yale University, School of the Environment. A geographer and urban scientist, she is an expert on contemporary urbanization, especially in Asia. Her research focus is how urbanization will affect the planet. She has pioneered methods to reconstruct urban land use with satellite imagery and has developed novel methods to forecast urban expansion. She is currently co-leading the urban mitigation chapter for the current IPCC 6th Assessment Report and co-lead the same chapter for the IPCC 5th Assessment Report, published in 2014. She is co-editor-in-chief of the journal, Global Environmental Change.