RECOVER  (Resilience to Climate Vulnerability and Environmental Risk) focuses on enhancing small islands' capacity to adapt to climate change through more inclusive and research-informed decision environments. Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are on the frontlines of climate change and urgently need transformational adaptation strategies. Three SIDS in the Asia-Pacific region will serve as "hubs of innovation" for scalable and systems-changing climate resilience approaches: the Maldives, Mauritius, and Fiji. 

To enhance climate change adaptation strategies, the Resource Lab successfully launched a collaboration with Dr. Simron Singh this year to support island nations. Dr. Singh is Professor, and the Principal Investigator for RECOVER, and member of the Waterloo Industrial Ecology Group  (WIEG), and the Waterloo Climate Institute (WCI) at the University of Waterloo . "We especially aim to evaluate the demand for resources and materials through hard-protection measures and design interventions to reduce infrastructure vulnerability", said Dr Andrea Thorenz.

In the current research project on the Maldives, the team examines the resource demands of climate change adaptation. Low-lying islands such as the Maldives are especially threatened by sea-level rise, which is against what those islands currently fight by resource-intensive hard protection measures. 

The RECOVER  project is part of a £110m UK-Canada framework research programme on Climate Adaptation and Resilience (CLARE), primarily funded by UK aid from the UK government (through FCDO), along with the International Development Research Centre, Canada (IDRC). Further information about RECOVER can be found here.

 

For further information on the collaboration, please contact:
Dr Andrea Thorenz, Head of Resource Lab, Center for Climate Resilience, Institute of Materials Resource Management, University of Augsburg, Phone: ++49 821 5983948, andrea.thorenz@uni-a.de