Microeconomic adaptation in social-ecological systems

Abstract: Global heating will affect ecosystems and the benefits that they provide to people in a wide variety of ways, with profound direct and indirect effects on human society. Microeconomic adaptation focuses on how households and firms are responding to climate signals by changing their behaviour. This project seeks to understand microeconomic adaptation to climate change in social-ecological systems, and the ways in which public policy can support the adaptation process. A dynamic approach will be used to investigate feedback relationships between adaptive capacity, adaptation measures, and adaptation outcomes. The project will focus on coral reefs and the tourism industry dependent on them as a lense through which to understand these dynamics.

Biography: Henry is a PhD candidate at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, where he combines dynamic systems theory with behavioural economics to contribute to the design of effective incentives to facilitate microeconomic adaptation to climate change. He holds a master degree in System Dynamics from the University of Bergen in Norway. For his master thesis, Henry developed a simulation model to better understand how human development around coral reefs in the Philippines is the cause of rapid coral reef degradation. After his master degree, Henry worked in Oslo as an energy system modeler in DNV GL’s Energy Transition Program.