Probing Climate Change: From NYC to Global Impacts at CCNY's UN University Hub

Episode Transcript

Vincent Boudreau00:00:15

Welcome to From City to the World. I'm your host. Vince Boudreau, the President of The City College of New York. From City to the World is a show about the work we're doing at City College and how it matters to people across the city and throughout the world. We'll discuss the practical application of our research in solving real-world issues like poverty and homelessness, mental health, and as today's conversation climate change. And typically what we do is we have a program where the first speaker comes from City College on faculty or staff, we bring in a second speaker from the community. And today we have a little bit of an amalgamation, a long-serving faculty member in our engineering school is paired with a relatively new faculty member, but somebody who has brought to the position a great deal of international governmental work and advocacy work and research. And so we're still kind of keeping that inside the campus out in the community dynamic for this show.

Today we are going to discuss something that's really exciting for us at City College, which is the launch of the very first United Nations University hub in the United States. UN University is a university that is supported by the United Nations and does both research and education of members of the United Nations and it has recently begun to partner with universities and we at City College is the very first American university that they've partnered with. We'll talk about this a little bit. Our specific United Nations University hub focuses on remote sensing and sustainable innovations for resilient urban systems. And it's the first of its kind. And when we say sustainable innovations for resilient urban systems, we're talking about the impact of climate change in communities like Harlem and the South Bronx and other places in Upper Manhattan.

This hub aims to connect CCNY and United Nations University, we'll call it UNU through the broadcast. It aims to connect CCNY and UNU's global research and educational efforts together and it's going to contribute to the UN's sustainable development goals, to international relations, and to the advancement of sustainable cities. But we're also really excited about how this hub can benefit people on this campus and people in the community within the sound of this broadcast. The formation of the hub inspires us on this campus to use science and technology to make urban areas and cities more adaptable and more resilient. Here's how the show is going to be. In the first half we will discuss the goals and relations of the hub with Dr. Reza Khanbilvardi, who is a long-term member of our engineering school. He's a licensed professional engineer. He's the Founder and Executive Director of CUNY's Remote Sensing of Earth Institute. He's also the Director of Center for Water Resources and Environmental Research here at CCNY.

Just before we use this phrase too many times, you're going to hear the phrase remote sensing a lot and remote sensing is one of the great tools we have for getting data around climate change. And it's everything from satellites to sensors that may be on the ground that we can access to get climate data. It's any kind of measurement apparatus we have, but really with a focus on satellite technology. And so we'll hear that phrase again and again as we go through these conversations. On the second half of the show, we'll be joined by Dr. Kaveh Madani. He is the Director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, and it's known as The UN Think Tank on Water. That's what you'll hear it referred to a lot, but he's also the CUNY CREST Institute professor and he's a former Vice President of UN Environment Assembly.

And we'll ask... We talked about CUNY CREST, that's the institute here at City College and we'll unpack that for you in just a second. Let me tell you a little bit about our first guest, Dr. Reza Khanbilvardi. In addition to being the Founder and Executive Director of CUNY's Remote Sensing of Earth Institute and the Director of the Center for Water Resources and Environmental Research, he was also the Director of Earth and System Sciences and Environmental Engineering here at CCNY. He served as the Founder and the Director of the NOAA Cooperative Science Center between 2001 and 2011, and he's also the Editor in Chief of the International Journal for Water. I'm going to go back again because a lot of acronyms in today's show. NOAA is the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric, Reza, you can fill in the last A.

Reza Khanbilvardi00:05:09

Atmospheric Administration.

Vincent Boudreau00:05:11

Okay-

Reza Khanbilvardi00:05:12

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Correct.

Vincent Boudreau00:05:15

Administration, right. This is where we get our weather information from and so much more. Dr. Khanbilvardi has worked with a host of agencies like NOAA, but also NASA, National Science Foundation, USAID, The United Nations, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He obtained his master's in environmental engineering, his doctorate in chemical engineering and water resource engineering, and a postdoctoral in water resources from the Pennsylvania State University in 1980, 1983, and 1984 respectively. And he has been a distinguished member of the City College faculty ever since. That's a long introduction, but it's been a long and illustrious career. Dr. Khanbilvardi, welcome two From City to the World.

Reza Khanbilvardi00:06:00

Thank you very much, President Boudreau.

Vincent Boudreau00:06:04

It's a pleasure to have you here. I want to start by some level setting about the questions of the work at the college. We listed all the various centers that you've been involved with, some of which you founded, and can you just talk about that? And then in addition to that, we've made some real investments at the college in remote sensing and satellite and climate change. Can you talk to us a little bit about the capacity of the centers that you work in and that you direct in this area of work?

Reza Khanbilvardi00:06:38

Sure. Thank you very much, President Boudreau. For many of you that you might know, City College, City College is a place that you can come up with the idea and you will find a number of faculty and student that they support you to build it around that idea. And this is what we did about more than 25 years ago that we had some research activity going on in using satellite information for monitoring the earth and the environment around us. And then we start thinking about how can we capitalize on those resources that we will start building up and create a national center that address not only New York City, but at the national level, the area of remote sensing, which was very new, very innovative about 25 years ago. We competed and we applied. We were able to secure funding from NOAA, which is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for many years. And since that 2001 that we were starting to work as a team, that funding keep coming to City College to provide resources and funding for our student, our faculty, and our labs to build those strength in remote sensing.

As many of you know, remote sensing, while it's new, it's very challenging too because you can't just do the computer programming sitting in your office to monitor that you need equipment, you need tools to do that one. We were able and fortunate enough to build those infrastructure in place that we could look at the earth from where we are sitting in our office and collect data and interpret the data for different use of it. Both from inside the campus and outside the campus. I'm glad to mention that in Northeast we are potentially one of the only university that has the capability of getting the data directly from satellites, coming into our campus, being used by our student and faculty to monitor the earth, both in terms of polar orbiting satellites, which is a different type of satellite than geostationary satellites.

We are looking at the whole global environment with a combination of these two satellites and getting information on clouds, on precipitation, on land surfaces, on vegetation, on lakes, on snow, on heat, and temperature. This capability has put us in a strong position not only attract money from the NOAA, but also the NASA and NSF and other agencies that they have some interest in monitoring and protecting the environment that we are living on it. The capability that we have created now is becoming a source of information for some of those agencies that they're funding us because they also need a more specific information about New York City environment. Also, certain areas that they are challenging, they want a more localized monitoring and detection and calibration of satellite products.

We have been fortunate enough to build not only the equipment, but also attract the right faculty and the right young scientists and students and PhD students, graduate students as well as undergraduate to work on different aspects of it. And over the last 25 years, we have really built a strength in all areas. When I say in all areas, we're talking about atmospheric elements of the environments, ocean aspects of the environment, as well as the land aspects of the environment. And that capability has put us on a map not only nationally but now internationally. Dr. Boudreau knows that there are a lot of interest from Caribbean and Africa and Asia that they like to work with us to develop better tools for their disaster management as well.

Vincent Boudreau00:11:21

In addition to remote sensing, the other explicit emphasis of this hub is on urban systems, and I know that you do your work globally. I've traveled with you up to Caribou, Maine to look at some of the sensing equipment you have up there, but most of the people listening to this show will be in the South Bronx and Upper Manhattan and Harlem. And could you talk a little bit about the particular mission you have to look at some of these issues in urban settings?

Reza Khanbilvardi00:11:55

Correct. As everybody knows, we are located in Manhattan, the heart of New York City. And New York City is the largest urban land in the universe that has all the issues. We are a coastal urban environment, so we have coastal issues, we have urban issues, and we have other environmental issues here. Consequently, we have been able to evolve our experimental sites as well as our educational and research capabilities focusing on the New York City urban environment. I'll give you a number of examples of those. The urban heat island, which is very high in New York City, especially during the summer, and a lot of community, especially in underserved community, are being exposed to it and there really are no solution to it except to find which areas are high in the risk of the urban heat island and what can be done to alleviate the problem. This is one of the issues that we have.

The urban flooding risk mapping. I mean New York City, especially in the last decade, has been faced with a number of storms that has caused not only a major cost of dealing with the urban flush flood, but also lives has been lost due to that one and the infrastructure had been damaged for that one. This is another area that we are focusing on, the flood forecasting and kind of warning system for floods and the area that they are very vulnerable to it. Other areas, air quality. Air quality is one of the areas that we have been intensified, especially in the last 20 years looking at the air quality of New York City. We have a number of sensors and field campaign in New York City metropolitan area that we focusing on measuring the particulate and aerosols in the air and related to the human health and exposure of the human to the particles that they are suspended in the air.

We have a number of networks of gauges in New York City that looks at the different elements of hydrometeorological parameters such as the heat, temperature, soil moisture, precipitation, runoff, solar energy, and we are looking at the air quality even around the buildings, how it is impacting the people that they are living in that area or working in those buildings. The other elements of it is really using those meteorological elements for energy use of New York City. How can we be a self-sustained energy of New York City when there are winds, which is a source of energy, when there are solar, which is a source of energy, which is a wave in the coastal area, which is another source of energy. How can we capitalize on getting all this source of different source of energy to come up with a solution that maximizes those natural elements of energy production for New York City area?

Vincent Boudreau00:15:14

Let's talk about this exciting new hub that's established. And maybe let's start by saying, what will this mean for your work at CCNY and to the college to have this UNU hub on campus?

Reza Khanbilvardi00:15:31

As I was explaining that for the last 25 years, we have been working with the regional and national agencies in dealing with the remote sensing and especially in monitoring and forecasting different type of environmental disaster on urban areas in New York City as well as other part of the state. The last two years we have start working with the United Nation University because we are in the largest urban environment in the country, and United Nation University does not have any hub or branches, not only in New York City, in the United States. When the interest of climate change and the impact of the climate change on the community, especially on global north as well as global south are becoming very obvious, our interests and our use of existing experts kind of indicated to us that we really should go beyond the borders of United States. We should really look at how can we help other urban areas on the global scale with the big lab that we have in New York City.

We did approach United Nation University, our student, they come from many part of the global south as well as global north, and we had a very diversified faculty on the campus as well as students. And our resources are such that we can really start looking how to help the larger communities that are being exposed to climate change especially underserved community in urban areas such as New York City. The new United Nation hub at City College, which as Dr. Boudreau mention we are the first one in the U.S. We are also the third one globally, but we are the only one globally and maybe the first one that is using remote sensing as the technology, as an emerging technology to monitor the environment that we are living in it.

And as the capability and computational era is increasing and the source of data are becoming more, and data science and application of large data and trends are becoming a reality, becoming a future trend for our study, this is giving us a capability that it never has been here before. Now the AI and machine learning are opening the door of using another emerging technology of using satellite data in monitoring the environment. Now what does it mean to City College, especially the hub that we are creating at the City College is focusing on three areas, three what we call it three pillars. One is research clusters that we are basically looking at the emerging technology in sensing the urban systems. We are looking at also the climate change impact on the health, especially in the underserved urban communities. And we are also working on the energy innovation for sustainable urban environment. How can we capitalize on the natural resources to obtain energy sources that becomes sustainable for us? That's in terms of the research.

Another pillar is really education, training, and capacity building. This pillar, even though we have been working for more than 25 years on education training of remote sensing and workforce development for the country, this is another area that we are going to be working with United Nation University in developing educational elements, training modules, and capacity building that benefits our students, undergraduate, graduate, masters, and PhD and give us the capability that we never had before that look at areas that we can develop a joint program. It is a joint degree program or joint certificate program or workshops or training for communities as well as students to get trained on sustainability of the urban environment.

And the third pillar is we are looking at the policy advocacy and outreach. How can we help to provide policy advices and expertise to different city agencies and those that they are decision makers for the city or for the urban areas to reduce our vulnerability, especially in historically underserved, socially vulnerable communities to the extreme events that the climate change is causing. These three pillars is there to be exploded in a sense that we used to do it a little bit, but now we are going to do it in a larger scale with more students and more faculty and more community engagement into it as well as some of the professional from United Nations.

Vincent Boudreau00:21:12

Can we talk a little bit about community engagement? I mean, this is an area of great concern to members of our community. And so could you talk a little bit about if I'm living on 135th Street listening to this broadcast, what opportunities does this open up for me and my neighbors?

Reza Khanbilvardi00:21:34

Yes. We have been engaged with the community as I say in the last 25 years on a more local community, smaller scale in terms of air pollution, in terms of being exposed to floodings. But now we can get them engaged in areas that they are, they have to adapt to it or they have to mitigate it. And as we know, the resources of agencies are becoming very limited. Community engagement in their own decision making is becoming important. The first thing is for the community is what we call it community outreach programs, how we can educate the community in the impact of the climate change on their own community. This would be a number of workshops and short courses and seminars and training and even a certificate programs for the community that they can get certificate through it. And then we are going to have a number of public awareness campaigns that will be based on local communities, community boards, because we think that this hub is in a position to empower the citizen to take an active role in not only promoting sustainable life but to do something about it.

And this is important that they become empowered to not only understand and the only way that they can become empowered by first getting a little bit information about it, how to deal with it and what are the source of it.

Vincent Boudreau00:23:21

I want to circle back to something you said in passing when you were talking about the three pillars. You talked about how emerging technology is allowing you to do new and different things. You referenced AI earlier and big data, and that may be what you're talking about or there may be other technologies, but what's some of the most exciting new things that are these new tools that are in your hands and what does it allow you to do that you weren't able to do previously?

Reza Khanbilvardi00:23:52

Well, I mean some of the new ways of using the AI and machine learning is really for looking at trends and be able to expect the changes. I mean, this week we are hearing that we are in the drought warning system and the city is being exposed to drought. One of the areas that we are working on on forecasting drought before it's happening because when it's happening is too late to sometimes do anything about it. But if we know about a month ago or a month and a half ago that we are approaching a drought situation, maybe there are things that we could have done sooner to alleviate the impact of the drought.

Machine learning and AI will help us analyze the large source of data information that we ingest into our models and to be able to come up with the risk of floodings that's going to happen down the road. And that way it gives not only the community but city agency and the local agencies to get red flags on the drought or even on floodings or other extreme events. This is one of the emerging technology that was not available to us maybe 10 years ago, but now it's becoming very readily available to us.

Vincent Boudreau00:25:17

The other pillar that you mentioned or one of the other three pillars where you talked about the educational mission and we are located in a college, we have students, we have graduate students, but there's another emphasis in the educational mission, which is you've also done a lot of work over the years to identify and educate students from a broad variety of backgrounds in this work, many of whom are not very well represented in if you go to NOAA or to NASA and can you talk about the efforts that you've made and the programs you've made to diversify this profession that you're in? And if I'm a young man or woman in the community listening to this, how do I get involved?

Reza Khanbilvardi00:26:04

Well, as many of you could imagine, the field of remote sensing and monitoring, the earth and environmental management and climate change impact is very interdisciplinary. You don't have to necessarily to be a civil engineer or electrical engineer or computer engineering to get involved in the process. There is a room for many field of science into this field, social sciences into it. Now the social science impact on the community become very high on the agenda of not only NOAA but many agencies. Over the last 25 years, we have been able to recruit student, especially from underserved communities to deal with the issue of different issues that are relevant in their own community. Some of the students, they're coming from areas that they get constant flood from the coastal waves as well as the rainfall. And so their interest is really looking at the impact of the flooding on their community. And some of them they come from air quality issue.

We have a number of very diversified field that is part of the remote sensing and air system sciences. We have not only degree program, but there is a lot of hope for creating micro-credential with the United Nations University hub that we are creating, this will be involving people at the UN to come and help us in teaching some of those courses and certify the programs that we have, which really good for job opportunity. In terms of workforce development, this is potentially the makeup or remote sensing workforce development in Northeast, if not the United States. I mean we are one of the four NOAA co-operative science, but we are also working with a number of agencies in terms of dealing with the issue of the lack of enough workforces in the future, especially from underserved community. And we are emphasizing that one heads on and we have been able to really make it dent in that number of population that they have not been traditionally attracted to high-end technology because of lack of resource or lack of, lean, or availability to educational elements of it that we are providing here.

Vincent Boudreau00:28:31

Just to build on this, a lot of people don't know this and I think a lot of people on this campus don't know this, but if you go back to the dawn of America developing a satellite capability, and of course this leads to NASA and it leads to the National Weather Service. A lot of these people that were the pioneers in putting equipment and remote sensing materials into space were City College graduates. I go down to Washington every year to talk with alumni and there's a group of 80 and 90-year-old men who are still meeting together as friends who were some of the founders of this stuff, weather service, satellite service, all the rest of it, City College graduates. You're building on a very, very strong CCNY tradition.

Reza Khanbilvardi00:29:21

That's true. I mean I have been sometimes surprised going to the high level of the NASA meeting or NOAA meeting, and one of those very senior management in the team suddenly says, "I am from City College. I attended City College 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago." And they are surprised that they see the tradition of innovation, especially the technology and application of technology and bringing them not only in the research but combining that with the educational opportunity for the students is becoming very high visible in Washington and other agencies.

Vincent Boudreau00:30:02

And now the conversation will be joined by Dr. Kaveh Madani, and it's a conversation we've been having about the very first United Nations UNU hub in the United States here at CCNY. And it's a hub devoted to remote sensing and urban systems and sustainability. Dr. Madani is the Director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, and you hear it referred to sometimes as the UN Think Tank on Water. He is a CUNY CREST Institute professor and a former Vice President of the United Nations Environment Assembly. Dr. Madani is an environmental scientist and educator. He previously served as the deputy head of Iran's Department of the Environment. He was the Vice President of the UN Environment Assembly Bureau and the chief of Iran's Department of Environment's International Affairs and Convention Center. He currently serves as a research professor here at CCNY's Remote Sensing Earth Systems Institute, and you'll hear that referred to as CUNY CREST.

When you hear CUNY CREST, that is our remote Sensing Earth Systems Institute, he's known distinctly for his work on integrating game theory into water resource management models as well as raising public awareness about water and environmental problems in his home country of Iran. He joined the United Nations University in 2021 as the head of the Nexus research program at the UNU Flores where he founded United Nations University's Resource Nexus AID, which stands for, Resource Nexus A-I-D and the A-I-D stands for Analytics Informatics and Data Program. Professor Madani has a PhD from the University of California Davis and has worked with leading academic institutions around the world. Prior to his public service, he held a tenured faculty position at the Imperial College of London. Professor Madani, welcome to From City to the World and thank you for being with us.

Kaveh Madani00:32:06

Thanks for having me and thanks for the generous intro.

Vincent Boudreau00:32:09

Well listen, you've done a lot and it's important that our listeners know who they're talking to when you come on the program. And I want to start by asking you just to kind of talk about the arc of your career and specifically how you came to this specific expertise you have in integrating game theory into this work. And we'll talk a little... Before you talk about game theory, I think we need to talk a little bit about what game theory is, but let's start more generally with just talking about the road you traveled to get to where you are today.

Kaveh Madani00:32:48

Yeah. I also look back and sometimes I get frustrated, but I think the route that I took is rooted partly in confusion and frustration. As an immigrant, you always search for some of the missing components of your life and then you compare societies with each other trying to figure out why they went through it and I think development path. And that's why I wanted to go beyond engineering, find out why the very good solutions that we produce in academia, in our scientific articles and don't get implemented. And I think that's why I got into also studying the mathematical fields up essentially modeling behavior, understanding why certain decisions are developed in certain ways.

Yeah, so that's why I did my PhD, when I was doing a PhD in civil engineering, I was taking courses in political science and economics and out of my field trying to figure out what's going on and why my country ended up going in a certain way, why other societies are taking a different path. And that's why I was interested in going beyond academia, talking to policymakers, understanding societies. And as I tell my students these days, there is always a good reason behind a bad decision and our mission should be to find out those reasons if we want to really change the way the world is functioning these days.

Vincent Boudreau00:34:34

That brings us pretty directly to game theory. And so for people who aren't familiar with the term, could you give us just a quick intro in what game theory is and then we can talk a little bit about how it comes into your work?

Kaveh Madani00:34:49

Game theory is essentially a mathematical study of behavior. You try to understand why people in certain situations make certain decisions based on the incentives, the information they have, their understanding, their motivations, and so on. It's essentially used to understand why certain things developed in certain ways in the past, but it's also used to predict and project how different processes would work in the future. And if we have an understanding of how things could work out, we might be able to intervene, change the incentive systems, provide additional information to people, and ask them to make decisions in different ways. It can be used to project election results or also project how the war can end or might end and so on. But also in the water resources context or environmental context, it can be used to understand if a certain policy would work, if farmers would react to a new incentive system, if climate change negotiations would lead to a resolution that would be win-win and everyone would agree to it and so on.

Vincent Boudreau00:36:11

I mean it really, you hear game theory and a lot of the different scenarios are actually modeled as games. You think about something like chicken where two cars are driving down a road and the question is who's going to turn off first? And then you model different kinds of decision-making interactions around that. There are the ideas of game playing at the center of this, but it becomes much, much more sophisticated and is really important in figuring out are individuals going to bear the costs of participating in things like remediating against climate change, changing consumption patterns, or they're going to try to pass that on to somebody else. Let me ask you, if you think about the research you've done and the way you've integrated game theory into this work, I mean one of the things game theory allows you to do is to see things that you wouldn't normally see if you didn't apply this analysis to it. Do you have a favorite kind of revelation that game theory has allowed you to see in some of the work that we do?

Kaveh Madani00:37:23

First thing is I think game theory has hopefully made me more humble and told me how ignorant I was or I still am because in theory tells you that many of the things would not work. It helps you get out of the prescriptive mode as a scientist in an ivory tower that is telling the world, telling people in the society how they should behave. And game theory essentially helps you think differently, search for different solutions, also search for the pathway to reach those solutions. It's no longer enough to tell people that they need to switch to renewables and consume less. You also have to think about how this becomes practical in the society like the U.S.

It helps you develop a different narratives for different societies. If I'm talking to people in societies where their people are starving, I cannot talk to them about avoiding meat because even eating meat is a dream for them. The narrative that I would sell and promote in a country like the U.S. is different from the narrative I should promote or use to connect to people in Africa or India. That is what has helped me. But you brought up chicken, the chicken game. One thing we do in managing natural resources, we always talk about the prisoner's dilemma game where you have two prisoners in different rooms and the technique that the cops have been using forever and it's still functional, but they have the choice of cooperating with each other and not confessing that they have committed a crime. And if they do that they get penalized but not a very long penalty of serving in prison or they can confess before the other party confesses and get a reward for cooperating with the police.

And we see that free lighting becomes an incentive and people try to essentially give up on their cooperation and then opt in for a solution that might not be the best, but it would serve their interest. We see that in societies, and the human being in many cases, you prioritize your self-incentive to the group incentive or the society's incentive. And that's something we have been used to say, "Okay, look at our groundwater, we continue pumping and if we pump less, we can save our aquifer for a longer period and farm together and gain together. And if you maximize short-term benefits, we are all going to lose together." And this is something we have experienced. The same thing with greenhouse gas emissions and so on.

And in one of the papers I tried to argue that actually we are lucky if we only end up being in a prisoner's dilemma mode. A lot of our games are going to get into the chicken mode where there could be only a few nations would be capable of saving the world and by the time we reach a conclusion that we are in the chicken mode, it might be too late actually to save the world. And that includes the United States and many other rich countries that so far have not been able to essentially address some of the global concerns when it comes to climate change. Also knowing these games, simple games would help you explain these situations to people, to the policymakers and help them understand what's going on and the risks that they're facing and their societies are facing.

Vincent Boudreau00:41:31

So much of what game theory proposes is that certain games have a kind of natural settling point where the incentives move you either closer to cooperation or away from cooperation, but as circumstances change, as you were just suggesting, you can get from a game where the incentives are that people ultimately at one level will cooperate to a game where the whole thing is to figure out who's going to blink first. I want to go back to this question of game theory because we're in the middle right now of some pretty high-level climate negotiations. There is some speculation that with an impending leadership change in the American administration we may not be, that is to say America may not be as inclined to play a leadership role in climate change as we might've been under other administrations.

But there's also a kind of tradition in international relations that says there are some problems that because they can only be solved collaboratively, lend themselves to cooperation far more than other kinds of inherently competitive international problems are. As you think about where we are for the potential of either international climate cooperation or conflict, how do you think the incentives are shaping up and how do shifts in leadership roles affect the possibility or the probability of that kind of collaboration?

Kaveh Madani00:43:07

I think there are positive stories and negative stories. On a positive side, we have made a lot of progress when it comes to climate change compared to some other big, big threats to humanity including environmental threats. That's a good part of it. We have an agreement in place, we haven't delivered on it, but the science is there, the consensus of the scientific community is there, the solutions, at least theoretical solutions are available, and a lot of countries have committed to those. At the societal level, we also have an understanding of what's happening and understanding of this threat. And this is true in the advanced economies and also underdeveloped communities and developing countries. That's the positive side of this story. But when it comes to bringing all countries together to solve a problem, there should be challenges available too. There are challenges on the way to get there and overcoming those challenges is not always easy because when you're dealing with these sorts of problems, the propensity to cooperate is something unique like a willingness to cooperate that that can be rooted in emotions, in your culture, in what's happening domestically, and so on.

And so then change of leadership or change of political systems in different countries can affect the nature of the negotiations or I would say the soul of cooperation in some ways. And I think what is happening not only in the United States right now, but also the rest of the world, including Europe, with the shift to the right, there is a little bit of overshadow and a question that comes when the President of the United States even questions the relevance or hope, the usefulness of an agreement like Paris Agreement. Then some other countries that we're not sure about it then start losing the shame of actually asking the same question or leaving the negotiations table. And that is not very promising when you know that the advanced economies not only have the power to change the game, but also have historical and ethical responsibility for stepping in and trying to address this issue.

Vincent Boudreau00:45:53

Let me ask you kind of... In ways that you've just talked about, you've operated very strongly at an international level and thinking about collaboration, cooperation, why bad decisions were made by people who were well motivated. You've now moved into a very close relationship with an institute that operates globally, but also has a specific mission to look at urban environments including environments very close at hand. And so how do you square or how do you think about the potential to do this kind of very local work in addition to the global focus that you've taken on in a lot of your work?

Kaveh Madani00:46:39

This is the thing. I think one of the reasons that we are seeing the political shift in the world and even elites having a hard time convincing their societies about their solutions and the future and policies is the fact that there is a lot of people in these societies, a lot of voters in these societies feel disconnected and feel marginalized. Let's use the example of farmers. In many societies, in any advanced economies, now we have farmers who feel marginalized, they are frustrated when they hear carbon tax and policies that are focused on renewables or removing substance. And these policies were meant to actually protect farmers from climate change and the future water bankruptcy and all those problems. Why? Because they were not properly, I think, communicated to them and they were not properly linked to their problems, then people felt that their concerns were not captured.

If we want success at the global level, we should not overlook what is happening within in societies. I negotiated actually for Iran during one of the climate change negotiations back in 2017 in Bonn. And I'm this person who has a climate change background, has published on this topic, and of course has been a supporter of the Paris Agreement. But when I'm negotiating for my country, I have to think about how I align national interest with international interest, right? When I'm negotiating for a country like Iran, I have to highlight the fact that look, your concerns, the European concerns are mainly related to energy. But a country like Iran, same is true for the United States or Canada, they might not have energy as their primary concern. And there are other things to also consider. And I was speaking on behalf of Iran, so my problem is water, my problem is industrial, my problem is food security. And then I want those issues to be also addressed within the negotiations. If I don't do that, I might smile in front of camera and take a good photo, but when I go back home, my society will question me for the lack of attention to their problem.

I think this is something you need to address and I think your hub is doing that. You cannot talk about the world and the future generations if people in Harlem and Brooklyn are suffering from injustice, cheap wage issues, and floods and so on, there is hypocrisy, a feeling of hypocrisy there if you only think about the future and not talk about today. And that's where the disconnect has come. And I think the election results should be, game theoretically speaking, we should not be surprised. We should look at this and look at what has happened and question why societies and voters are going in certain direction and then try to revise our submissions, revisit our policies, and then change the game. And part of that is thinking about immediate issues, thinking about what we can do that not only benefits the future generations, but also address the problems of the society right now in the United States, in New York state, and in New York City.

Vincent Boudreau00:50:27

As you were talking about that you wanted to remind us that a scientific consensus on global warming in a national setting gets leveraged against national interest, which is absolutely true, but there's some good news there as well. Where there's a whole tradition in the study of international relations that says countries like for instance, the United States and Iran can be at loggerheads across a whole range of issues. But the fact that scientists from the two countries have access to the same scientific knowledge means that there's at least a foundation for a kind of collaboration that doesn't always occur to people if they're only operating in a political sphere or military sphere. You're right to remind us that national interest comes very, very strongly into play. But on the other side of it, in so many areas where science leads a technical conversation, there's at least a foundation of something like consensus among scientists that maybe if we can figure out that translation of national interest into scientific consensus or scientific consensus filtered through national interest can provide some basis for collaboration. Does that feel in any way accurate to you?

Kaveh Madani00:51:57

Well said, well said. We know of the value of science and I think in this divided world, science is our tool to still unite and tell the same story. During the Cold War, even if we learn lessons, the scientific exchanges and science diplomacy one of the tool that kept the scientists together and scientists in every society have been very, very helpful in essentially changing behavior, creating motivations, and incentives for cooperation. Iran and the United States can fight on many fronts, but when it comes to a dried lake, they can have a consensus that this is bad. Whether it's happening in Salt Lake, Utah for Salt Lake or Lake Urumi in Northwest Iran, same story, sadly, same problems. And environment is another area that is very uniting. It doesn't matter what your ideology, religion, culture, language is, when a species is getting extinct, you get sad. If you see a flood, you are frustrated.

It has a very, very strong power to unite people. And for that matter, actually it has become a little like in some countries have become sensitive to it, trying to securitize and politicize it. But I think that's what we can fight against. And remote sensing, I want to highlight that because this was the subject that was brought up a lot of times, is one of the very, very powerful tools we have to tell those stories. Satellites don't lie to us, images are very, very clear and tell us how deforestation is destroying the planet, how the desertification is happening, how floods are destroying communities. And these powerful images can essentially help us think better.

Vincent Boudreau00:54:00

I am going to do something unfair right now. You've sucked me into this very interesting conversation about your research and the work and climate change, but we really wanted to brag about how exciting this UNU hub at CCNY is. We are running out of time, but I want to give you a minute if you can do it, to tell us why this is an exciting thing.

Kaveh Madani00:54:23

It is an exciting thing because it brings the United Nations to the university campus and it's bringing it to The City College of New York with its history, the history that tells us that leaders of that university or founders of that university were thinking differently at their time and were progressive, thinking about the connection to society, thinking about justice, thinking about making knowledge accessible. And I think that's what we celebrated. That's why we selected the City College to be the home of our first UNU hub in the United States. Every good university these days has an incubator and an accelerator there for those people who want to be rich and the innovators, that's pretty good. But we also need accelerators and incubators for those who want to be change makers. And I'm glad that we have that one now at The City College of New York.

Vincent Boudreau00:55:21

I'm thrilled that we have it as well. Ladies and gentlemen, if you're listening to this, this is a very, very big deal for us. We're thrilled to have it and we only launched it a few weeks ago. The impact of this hub on the work we're able to do, the way we're able to draw community into this work is going to be something that's unfolding over the next couple of years. And I'm deeply and powerfully excited by it and I hope you are too. Reza spoke earlier about the various seminars and opportunities that will be opened up to community members. And so watch this space. We'll be talking about it more and making sure that we're using community media outlets to make sure you know about the opportunities that will be coming by virtue of the inauguration of this very, very exciting UNU hub on campus.

Thank you for listening to From City to the World. I want to give a special thanks to our guests, first, Dr. Reza Khanbilvardi, who is the Founder and Executive Director of the CUNY Remote Sensing of Earth Institute, and the Director of the Center for Water Resources and Environmental Research at CCNY. And also to Dr. Kaveh Madani, who is the Director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, which from now on you will know as a UN Think Tank on Water and a research professor here at CCNY's Remote Sensing Earth Systems Institute, which you'll know as CUNY CREST. The show is produced by yours truly, Vince Boudreau and Tiffany Berth. And we'll be with you again next month for another edition of the show. Thanks everybody.