Professor Walter Leal Filho (BSc, PhD, DSc, DPhil, DL, DLitt, DEd) is a Senior Professor and Head of the Research and Transfer Centre "Applications of Life Sciences" at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences in Germany and at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has in excess of 250 publications to his credit, among which ground-breaking books such as "Handbook of Climate Change Management" and others. He teaches on information, education, communication on climate change at various European universities. He has over 20 years of research experience and has a particular interest on the connections between climate and human behavior.

Dr. Johanna Nalau is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with Griffith Climate Change Response Program (GCCRP) and Griffith Institute for Tourism (GIFT) at Griffith University specializing in climate change adaptation policy- and decision-making processes. Johanna is a social scientist whose research focuses on understanding how policy- and decision-makers deal with some of the central assumptions related to climate change adaptation, and the array of factors and processes that drive and constrain climate change adaptation, including constraints emerging from adaptation science and theory. Other current research includes ecosystem-based adaptation, sustainable tourism, traditional knowledge, and disaster risk management, with a recent focus in the Pacific region. She previously coordinated and led the first climate adaptation project in Zanzibar, Tanzania before joining Griffith in 2009, and has conducted research in Australia, Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa, and Kiribati.



