Dr. Anne Larigauderie is Executive Director of DIVERSITAS, the international programme dedicated to biodiversity science. She obtained a PhD in plant ecology, from the Université des Sciences et Techniques du Languedoc, Montpellier, France, in 1985. As plant ecologist, she spent ten years performing experimental and field work at different institutions: study of gas exchange in first pilot project performing CO2 enrichment of natural ecosystems in the arctic tundra (San Diego State University, USA), of root competition for nutrient in California grasslands (University of California – Davis, USA), of responses of grass species to various scenarios of elevated CO2 and temperature (Duke University, USA), and of the adaptation of dark respiration of alpine plant species to future elevated temperatures (University of Basel, Switzerland). In 1996 she became the coordinator of the Swiss Priority Programme on Biodiversity, and the scientific adviser to the Swiss delegation to the Convention on Biological Diversity.
In 1999, she joined the International Council for Science (ICSU, Paris) as Environment Science Officer, in charge of ICSU’s portfolio of environmental programmes. She was appointed as Executive Director of DIVERSITAS late 2001, and tasked with leading the construction of a new programme for biodiversity science.

Brendan Mackey has a PhD in tropical forest ecology, and is a professor of environmental science in the Fenner School of Environment and Society, The Australian National University. He has worked as a research scientist with the CSIRO and the Canadian Forest Service. He currently services as a member of the IUCN Council and the Earth Charter International Council. Brendan's research is in the related fields of environmental biogeography, biodiversity conservation, terrestrial carbon dynamics, and ecosystem-based adaptation.

Jian Liu is Chief of the Climate Change Adaptation Unit at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi. Prior to this appointment (since 2005) he served as Deputy Secretary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) at WMO headquarters in Geneva.

Previous posts include research professor of ecology, director of the Chinese Ecosystem Research Network, Deputy Director General of the Bureau of Resources and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Programme Manager for Environmental Management of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development.

Jian’s major work areas include: research, research planning and management, science and policy interface including government consultation through the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development and facilitation of intergovernmental process on climate change and mountain issues.

He also spearheaded the polar research programme of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the early 1990s, shifted the foci of the Chinese Ecosystem Research Network to climate change related studies in the early 2000s, and established an environment programme within ICIMOD in 2003. Furthermore, he assisted in the successful completion of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report in his capacity as Deputy Secretary.

Jian has served as a team leader for a number of policy reports and strategic research plans accepted by relevant government agencies in the Chinese Government. He has also written several publications, tech nical reports and issues papers.

Dr Lynda Chambers, Senior Research Scientist, Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research – Bureau of Meteorology. Dr Chambers specialises in climate research and its interface with Australian flora and fauna. She has published extensively on such topics as: phenology, migration, species abundance, climate variability and change, climate extremes, and forecasting. Lynda is a project leader for the National Ecological Meta Database and the citizen science project ClimateWatch. Other current roles include the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility Terrestrial Biodiversity Steering Committee and a lead author on the National Marine Climate Change and Adaptation Report Card. Lynda was a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability).

Takle is Professor and Director of the Climate Science Initiative at Iowa State University (ISU) where he has been on the faculty since 1971. His research focuses on regional climate modeling of contemporary and future scenario climates for the US for both process studies and impacts of climate change. Output from regional models has been used to study changes in the regional hydrological cycle and characteristics of precipitation events in contemporary and future scenario climates. Climate impact studies have included changes in crop yields, streamflow and hydrological cycle components in the Upper Mississippi River Basin, changes in requirements for agricultural drainage systems, changes in wind and solar energy in future scenario climates, and changes in pavement performance under climate change. He and his ISU colleagues are participating in the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program which is preparing climate scenarios for impacts studies based on ensembles of RCMs driven by output of multiple GCMs.

Mike is a scientist with an academic background in ecology and natural resource management. His earlier career covers engineering design, tourism and recreation, conservation management. He is currently working within the Integrated Land Use Systems group at the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, covering disciplines including land use systems modelling (crops and livestock), climate change impacts and adaptations, land capability classification, model and data quality evaluation, agro-meteorology, socio-economics and 'soft-systems' (stakeholder engagement). This interdisciplinary research background is focused within a holistic framework to research sustainable land use systems under economic and climate driven change, consider trade-offs and synergies in multiple objectives for land use.