'Not in the Room: What it Takes to Build Collective Action on Shared Climate Risk' Leadership, Organisations, Behaviour and Reputation Research Seminar

Professor Cornforth leads interdisciplinary research connecting climate science with adaptation decisions, building evidence alongside governments, communities and international partners. Her work has shaped national adaption programmes led by the UN Environment Programme and World Bank resilience initiatives, as well as providing evidence for the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change Adaptation Gap Reports.

After earning a PhD in Tropical Meteorology, she gained more than two decades of experience working at the boundary between climate science, policy and practice in climate-vulnerable and conflict-affected regions across Africa, the Middle East and Asia. She is currently Principal Investigator on several major collaborative projects, spanning food security, neglected tropical diseases and transboundary climate risk, and part of the UN's WMO World Climate Research Programme Science Strategy Task Force.

The topic of this presentation is 'Not in the Room: What it Takes to Build Collective Action on Shared Climate Risk'. This seminar will draw upon the Pearl’s work across the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia to explore how climate risk is often shared; countries sharing a river rarely discuss climate strategy with one another and agreement to act on it rarely follows on its own.

The pattern repeats at every scale. Within a single government, relevant ministries often fail to co-ordinate, whilst scientists reluctant to step outside their own discipline show the same behaviour, even within one research field.

The Pearl's research involves an ongoing transboundary programme, which brings senior officials from five governments into shared decision-making to examine what actually gets parties facing the same climate risk working together and what difference that makes. Underpinning this work is 'My Climate Risk' and the Pearl’s methodology for starting from context, built for the fragile, data-sparse settings where conventional tools don’t reach. As such, the seminar will trace what brings parties into the same room and the deliberate choices made, before closing with what the research outcomes suggest for replicability.

After the seminar has concluded, Professor Cornforth will lead an expert session workshop, titled 'Exploring the Pearl: Research and Collaborations'. This workshop will highlight areas of the Pearl's research that Henley Business School faculty and PhD students can potentially work together on.

The seminar is for an internal audience and will be held on 8 October 2026, 1:00pm, in room LG01 of the Henley Business School building, Whiteknights campus. For those unable to attend in person there is also the option to dial in remotely via Microsoft Teams. If you are interested in joining, please contact Alex Baker on a.j.baker@henley.ac.uk

Members of LOBR faculty may also request to book a one to one meeting with Professor Cornforth. Each appointment will last 20 minutes, between 3:30pm to 4:30pm. Slots are limited and will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. To arrange an appointment, please contact Alex Baker on a.j.baker@henley.ac.uk

LOBR research seminars are co-ordinated by Professor Bernd Vogel and Dr Anastasiya Saraeva.