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Diana Liverman: My question is, is this a good thing to do? Does this help reduce the
risk of climate change? Or is it some sort of indulgence or fraud or something…
Diana Liverman: I don’t think we’re doomed. Um, we’re definitely putting unsustainable
pressures on the planet and we need to figure out how to live in a warmer world.
Narrator: Regents professor Diana Liverman is a geographer and co-founder of the University
of Arizona Institute for the Environment. Her overarching task, however, is creating
communities of science and policy to help the world cope with climate change.
Diana Liverman: So, I’ve got a series of projects, again many of them with my graduate
students, it’s all collaborative, which is to understand the process of adaptation
and what will make it successful. And, also, whether there are limits to adaptation. I
mean, are we going to get to the point where in parts of the world its so warm that you
can’t even grow the same crops anymore and you’ve got to really do something very dramatic?
Or are we going to have to move cities away from the coast? And that is a very serious
policy question, but it’s a fascinating research question.
Narrator: In addressing these problems the institute, co-directed by Jonathan Overpeck,
taps into the UA’s pool of talented researchers from across campus.
Diana Liverman: To see a new professor in English who teaches environmental writing
talking to a new young guy in economics that works on environmental economics talking to
an atmospheric scientist is really what the institute is about.
Narrator: As a geographer Liverman is accustomed to interdisciplinary collaboration.
Sallie Marston: The discipline has two sort of major components to it: physical scientists
and social scientists. So she understands both environmental kinds of questions as well
as the human questions that go along with the environment in which those humans live.
Narrator: Her commitments range from chairing national science foundation committees to
startups like the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research.
Diana Liverman: Hi Chen. How are you?
Narrator: Closer to home she helped start the UA’s climate assessment for the southwest.
Diana Liverman: It’s one of the original additions of Silent Spring and, um, to educate
how important that is my dog is named after her.
Sallie Marston: She’s very good at asking other people questions. You know, she sits
next to people on planes and she asks them questions and before you know it they’re
giving money to some cause that she’s got. She was invited to the Clinton White House
to participate in, I guess it was a kind of summit on climate change and she sat there
right between President Clinton and Vice President Gore and she talked to them like they were
her next-door neighbors. I mean she’s very comfortable I think because she believes in
what she’s doing.
Narrator: Her worldviews were shaped in part by her early years.
Diana Liverman: I was born in Ghana in West Africa, because my dad was working for the
British government. And they were building a very large dam in Ghana. And that actually
gave me interest in sort of water and environment from quite an early age. But I think the thing
that my parents did that had the most enduring impact was that every holiday they would take
us to a British national park. We would rent some beat up old cottage and go hiking and
go swimming and I think going to all those different national parks really gave a love
of sort of the landscape.
Diana Liverman: You don’t really explain what an offset is.
Student: So here, this is what I have.
Diana Liverman: Probably the most rewarding part of my career has been working with graduate
students over the years and learning from their ideas and the fact that every year you
can have a new set of graduate students that sort of re-inspires you and re-enthuses you
even if you’re feeling a bit burnt out.
Miriam Gay-Antaki: Whenever I need her help or advice, she’s always there. I sent her
an email and she gets back to me immediately wherever in the world she is. Like, sometimes
I don’t even know she’s not here… So she’s very available.
Narrator: Liverman’s former students are doing research and serving on committees around
the globe. As geographers, however, she and her students are also big on fieldwork.
Diana Liverman: A lot of the work we are doing now, or my graduate students are doing now,
is looking at various policies that are coming in. Either protecting forests or providing
money to help with adaptation to sea-level rise and actually seeing if those policies
are working in the communities. Of course the other roll of grad students is to dog
sit.
Miriam Gay-Antaki: It’s more like I have an awesome house we have a pool you can eat
whatever you want and drink whatever you want, oh and there’s also a dog.
Narrator: When she’s not in the field, serving on international committees or teaching Liverman
enjoys spending time with friends in a local book club or poking around in the desert.
Ultimately though, Diana Liverman is focused on a very big picture.
Sallie Marston: Unlike many pessimists among us she believes she can make a difference
that she can actually change. She can have an impact by the kinds of conversations she
has, by the kind of work she has and have the world be different.