Dr Richard J.T. Klein (born 5 October 1969) is a geographer with more than fifteen years of research experience on human vulnerability and adaptation to climate variability and change.

He is an internationally leading expert on adaptation science and climate policy and has been involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 1994, most recently as coordinating lead author in the Fourth Assessment Report.

He also contributed to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and to the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change.

Richard coordinates climate policy research across all SEI centres.

Before joining SEI he spent almost eight years at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), where he was group leader and deputy head of the department of Global Change and Social Systems.

He directed the award-winning interdisciplinary programme Environmental Vulnerability Assessment (EVA), upon which in 2005 he initiated the joint PIK-SEI research activity Formal Approaches to Vulnerability Assessment that Inform Adaptation (FAVAIA).

Richard has been a principal investigator in a number of large collaborative research and capacity building projects, including WISE, DINAS-COAST, ATEAM, Security Diagrams, cCASHh, NeWater, ADAM, Clipore, SWECIA and Climate for Development. In addition, he has provided consultancy and advisory services to a large number of governments, international organisations and non-governmental organisations.

He was instrumental in organising the seminal IPCC Workshop on Adaptation in 1998 and the Potsdam Workshop on Adaptive Capacity and Development in 2001.

Richard holds a PhD (magna cum laude) in environmental geography (Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel), as well as master’s degrees (distinction) in quaternary geology (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and environmental sciences (University of East Anglia).

To date he has produced around seventy journal articles, book chapters and reports, edited two books and two special journal issues and contributed to numerous national and international workshops and conferences. He is the editor-in-chief of the forthcoming international journal Climate and Development. He co-supervised one MA student and one PhD student, and currently has advisory responsibilities for five PhD students.

Publications

• The Human Dimension of Climate Adaptation: The Importance of Local and Institutional Issues (2009)

• Adaptation Finance under a Copenhagen Agreed Outcome (2009)

• Identifying Countries that are Particularly Vulnerable to the Adverse Effects of Climate Change: An Academic or a Political Challenge? (2009)

• Bilateral Finance Institutions and Climate Change: A Mapping of Climate Portfolios (2009)

• Climate Change – The Safety’s Off (2009)

• Integrating knowledge to assess coastal vulnerability to sea-level rise: the development of the DIVA tool (2009)

• Towards a formal framework of vulnerability to climate change (2009)

• Climate and development in times of crisis (2009)

• International climate policy (2009)

• Global Assessment of Coastal Vulnerability to Sea-Level Rise: Experience from DINAS-COAST (2009)

More publications »

Projects

• Climate Policy Research Program of Mistra (CLIPORE)

  
  

• Information Dissemination on Energy and Environment in Developing Countries

  
  

• Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies (ADAM): Supporting European Climate Policies

  
  

• Clipore - Climate Policy Research

  
  

• Climate for Development – Building Institutional Capacity

  
  

• Mistra-SWECIA

  
  

• Nordic climate change adaptation research network (NORDCLAD-Net)