Previous Fora / 2013
KABAT, Pavel
Director, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
Pavel Kabat became
the tenth Director of the International Institute for Applied Systems
Analysis (IIASA) in February 2012. As Director, Professor Kabat is the
Chief Executive Officer of the Institute, responsible for the formulation,
management, and administration of all research programs and other activities at
IIASA.
Born in Czechoslovakia in 1958, Professor Kabat lived and worked in Canada and
the Netherlands before moving to Austria to direct IIASA. Previously, he held
the Chair of the Earth System Science and Climate Change Group at
Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands, where he was also
Chair of the Board of the Wageningen Climate Centre, and Science Director and
Council Chair of the Dutch
National Climate Research Program. As leader of these groups, Professor
Kabat helped raise €150 million in funding for integrative research while the
Earth System Science Group was evaluated as “excellent” in two consecutive
reviews by independent international committees in 2007 and 2010.
Professor Kabat remains a Professor of Earth System Science at Wageningen
University, and Director and Chair of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and
Sciences’ Institute
for Integrated Research on Wadden Sea Region.
Professor Kabat has over twenty years’ experience of leading interdisciplinary
and international research teams investigating global environmental
change. During this time with support from the European Commission and
other large international agencies such as the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA), he has pioneered large-scale research on global change
that has provided the foundation for a new generation of thinking in global
change research. His roles have included being Co-Chair of two of the
International Scientific Steering Committees of the International
Geosphere-Biosphere Programmes, ILEAPS from 2004 to date and BAHC from
1994 to 2003; and the Science Director of the International Dialogue on Water
and Climate and the International Cooperative Programme on Water and Climate
from 2001 to 2009.
Since his PhD in Hydrology, Water Resources and Amelioration in 1986; he has
built scientific expertise in climate hydrology and water cycle, water
resources and climate, land interactions with the atmosphere and biogeochemical
feedbacks, climate system and climate change, and global change. During this
time, Professor Kabat has authored or co-authored over 200 refereed
publications, including 8 books. He is on the editorial board of range of
international scientific journals and is also a member of a variety of
academies of sciences and learned societies, ranging from the Finnish Academy of Sciences to the Slovak Academy of Sciences.
Professor Kabat has provided science and policy advice to numerous organizations
and governments in various roles such as Chief Scientist for an Asian
Development Bank project in Bangladesh from 2008 to 2010, Member of the
Advisory Group on Climate to the Dutch Parliament, Member of the High Level
International Mekong Delta Committee and Review Editor for the Fifth Assessment
Report of the IPCC.
ABSTRACT
09:00-10:30 26 NOVEMBER
PLENARY SESSION IV. “SCIENCE FOR NATURAL RESOURCES”