Adaptation to Climate Change: International Policy Options

Elliot Diringer
Director of International Strategies
Pew Center on Global Climate Change

Elliot Diringer is Director of International Strategies at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. He oversees the Center's analysis of the international challenges posed by climate change and strategies for meeting them, and directs the Center's outreach to key governments and actors involved in international climate change negotiations.

Mr. Diringer came to the Pew Center from the White House, where he was Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Press Secretary. In this capacity, he served as a principal spokesman for President Clinton and advised senior White House staff on press and communications strategy. He previously served as Senior Policy Advisor and as Director of Communications at the Council on Environmental Quality, where he helped develop major policy initiatives, led White House press and communications strategy on the environment, and was a member of U.S. delegations to climate change negotiations.

Before joining the White House, Mr. Diringer was a veteran environmental journalist. As a reporter and editor at the San Francisco Chronicle from 1983 to 1997, he covered the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and authored several award-winning environmental series.

Mr. Diringer holds a degree in environmental studies from Haverford College. In 1995-96, he was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, where he studied international environmental law and policy.

Joel B. Smith
Vice President
Stratus Consulting Inc.

Joel B. Smith is a Vice President with Stratus Consulting Inc. in Boulder, Colorado. Mr. Smith has been analyzing climate change impacts and adaptation issues for over 18 years. He was a Coordinating Lead Author for the Synthesis chapter on climate change impacts for the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a Lead Author for the U.S. National Assessment on climate change impacts.  He is a lead author on the current IPCC assessment. In addition, he was the technical coordinator on vulnerability and adaptation for the U.S. Country Studies Program, is the coordinator of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change series on Environment, and is or has provided technical guidance to the Electric Power Research Institute, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the United Nations, the Rockefeller Foundation, and to states and municipalities on a number of vulnerability assessments and adaptation projects.

Mr. Smith worked for the Environmental Protection Agency from 1984-92, where he was the Deputy Director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Climate Change Division.  He is a co-editor of EPA's Report to Congress: The Potential Effects of Global Climate Change on the United States, published in 1989, As Climate Changes: International Impacts and Implications, published by Cambridge University Press in 1995, Adaptation to Climate Change: Assessments and Issues published by Springer-Verlag in 1996, Climate Change: Adaptive Capacity and Development, published in 2003 by Imperial College Press, Integration of Public Health with Adaptation to Climate Change, published by Taylor & Francis in 2005, and Impact of Climate Change on Regional Systems: A Comprehensive Analysis of California to be published by Edward Elgar. He joined Hagler Bailly in 1992 and Stratus Consulting in 1998. He has published more than a twenty articles and chapters on climate change impacts and adaptation in peer reviewed journals and books.

Besides working on climate change issues at EPA, he also served as an analyst examining oceans and water regulations, and was a Special Assistant to the Assistant Administrator for the Office of Policy, Planning and Evaluation. Mr. Smith was a Presidential Management Intern in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 1982-1984. He has also worked in the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Mr. Smith received a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Williams College in 1979, and in 1982, received a Master of Public Policy Degree from the University of Michigan.