Title: Climate change adaptation through a justice lens
Speaker: Dr. Susanne Hanger-Kopp, Senior Research Scholar, The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
Date: 11 February, 2026 (Wednesday)
Time: 3:30 pm
Venue: Room LH 213, IIT Delhi
Abstract:
Drawing on five years of work at IIASA, this seminar introduces the Applied Justice Taxonomy and Assessment Framework (AJUST) for assessing justice in climate change adaptation. Susanne Hanger-Kopp will explain the framework’s purpose, core concepts, and limitations, and show how it can support transparent, policy-relevant assessments of several justice-relevant dimensions of adaptation. She will then share insights from recent and ongoing projects applying AJUST in several European contexts, illustrating how justice considerations can be integrated into adaptation planning and evaluation, and where trade-offs and blind spots may arise. The seminar concludes with an open discussion on how justice frameworks can be strengthened and adapted across contexts, including opportunities for mutual learning with adaptation work in India.
Bio:
Susanne Hanger-Kopp is part of the Equity and Justice (EQU) Research Group of the IIASA Population and Just Societies Program. She has 15 years of research and teaching experience in the areas of climate change adaptation and disaster risk management and has in parallel also worked on the energy transition. At IIASA, she has a leading role in developing the IIASA/EQU justice framework, which is instrumental in promoting comprehensive justice assessment in research and policy.
Her analytical focus lies on governance and institutional development, but she also has experience with behavioral approaches. Most importantly, she is a knowledge integrator, designing and facilitating inter- and transdisciplinary research projects. For this purpose, she is invested in developing and promoting qualitative systems mapping as an indispensable tool to support systems thinking across disciplines, sectors, and subject matters.
Hanger-Kopp has been chapter lead author for the Global Assessment Report for Disaster Risk Reduction 2022, and Lead Author for the Austrian Panel on Climate Change (APCC) Assessment Report on Climate Change in Austria (AAR2).
Hanger-Kopp received her PhD from the Department of Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zurich, where she is currently a lecturer in the Climate Policy Lab.