July 29, 2021 via Zoom. Presented in partnership with the International Relations Council. It took hundreds of thousands of years for the global population to reach 1 billion people, and just 200 years later it has skyrocket to over 7 billion. The World Population Report now estimates that the human population will swell to 10.9 billion before the end of the century. Driven largely by advances in medical care and improved living standards, how will this rapid growth impact our environment and communities? In this discussion, experts will examine the potential outcomes of this considerable population increase and how it will affect people and our planet. The moderator Dr. Jennifer D. Sciubba (Ph.D. University of Maryland) is the Stanley J. Buckman Professor of International Studies and department chair at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. Dr. Sciubba has studied at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research and frequently advises the US Government and others on demographics. She is the author of The Future Faces of War: Population and National Security (2011) and 8 Billion and Counting: How Sex, Death, and Migration Shape Our World (2022), and editor of A Research Agenda for Political Demography (2021). Dr. Sciubba is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Phi Beta Kappa and of the board of the Population Reference Bureau. She is affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center, and the Rising Powers Initiative at Boston University. The panel Dr. Kanta Kumari Rigaud is a Lead Environmental Specialist and Regional Climate Change Coordinator in the Africa Region of the World Bank Group. She is a leading expert on climate adaptation and resilience and works on climate policy, strategy and knowledge management. She led the development of the World Bank’s Next Generation Africa Climate Business Plan; and is working on programs in Kenya and Uganda and provides advice on multiple other countries. Her passion and leadership is reflected in the pioneering flagship report on Groundswell – Preparing for Internal Climate Migration; upcoming Groundswell Africa series; and advancing climate action through World Bank’s Climate and Disaster Risk Screening tools; and most recently the Resilience Booster tool. She has a doctorate from the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. She is the co-chair of the Environmental Change and Migration Working Group of the Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development KNOMAD. Lisa Palmer is a journalist, author, and the National Geographic Professor of Science Communication at the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. As an award-winning environmental and science journalist and author, Palmer teaches science communication at GWU and draws on her two decades of experience to lead the education program at GW’s national collegiate publishing platform, Planet Forward, and at the National Geographic Storytelling division. Palmer has written for a wide range of publications including the Nature family of journals, Yale E360, The Guardian, Nautilus, The New York Times, The New Republic, Ensia, Slate, and many others. Her book, HOT, HUNGRY PLANET: The Fight to Stop a Global Food Crisis in the Face of Climate Change (St. Martin’s Press; 2017), chronicles her travels around the world and the urgent innovations needed to feed a growing population. Palmer was previously a senior fellow at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) and she was a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., where she conducted research on global food security, resilience, and environmental sustainability. She is professional member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, the National Association of Science Writers, and the D.C. Science Writers Association. She is a Trustee of the Population Reference Bureau (PRB).

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