Smithsonian director to talk about climate change, biodiversity

Climate change and its impacts on biodiversity will be up for discussion in St. Peters Bay on Thursday, Nov. 7.

Francisco Dallmeier, director of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s Centre for Conservation and Sustainability, will be the guest speaker.

The public lecture, which is being hosted by UPEI, will take place at the Dr. Roddie Community Centre, 5549 St. Peters Road in St. Peters Bay where the university’s Canadian Centre for Climate Change and Adaptation is being built.

Dallmeier leads and manages international projects with operations in Washington, D.C., Peru; Paraguay, and, Gabon. He is a team-oriented leader with 30 years of experience assessing the impact of development projects on biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Dallmeier regularly advises senior leadership of corporations, governments, NGOs with demonstrated collaborative excellence in interdisciplinary and multicultural science and capacity building for projects in biodiversity-rich areas and critical habitats. He was an early innovator in co-developing (with the energy industry) the inland-offshore exploration and development approach, no roads for sensitive tropical rainforest areas and the Biodiversity Monitoring and Assessment Program (BMAP) now used worldwide.

He is visiting UPEI to discuss future collaborations in teaching and research between the UPEI School of Climate Change and Adaptation and the Smithsonian Institute. For more information, visit upei.ca/climate.