2026 Environmental Policy Lecture: Climate Risk & Response: A Behavioural Challenge?
The 2026 Environmental Policy Lecture, Climate Risk and Response: A Behavioural Challenge?, is presented by Professor Ben Newell.
Climate risk is often broken down into three separate components: physical risks (floods, heatwaves, sea level rise), transition risks (technological and societal adjustments to a low-carbon economy), and liability risks (legal and financial exposures arising from a failure to disclose potential climate-related impacts).
Professor Ben Newell will share how coordinating our responses to all three of these components benefits immensely from an improved understanding of behavioural reactions to climate change. Drawing on data from a range of studies examining individual and institutional-level responses, he will provide insight on the psychological impacts of physical risk, the preferences for and impacts of different kinds of transition risk, and the potential effectiveness of assessing and disclosing liability risks on changing behaviour.
Across these studies, Professor Newell will emphasise the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to addressing the behaviour–climate challenge.
About the Lecture
The Environmental Policy Lecture is an initiative of the Western Australian Branch of the Australasian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society (AARES WA) and The University of Western Australia (UWA) Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy (CEEP). Each year, we invite a leading international speaker to discuss important environmental or natural resource issues. The 2026 Lecture is co-hosted with the Forrest Research Foundation and forms part of The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia’s Social Sciences Week 2026.
This event is supported through a Social Sciences Week Spark Grant. The views, information and opinions presented by speakers and participants are those of the authors and presenters and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Funding support does not constitute endorsement by the Academy of any particular views, findings, recommendations or organisations.
