Climate Change

Through her experience as a social worker, Alex Bhathal has had the opportunity to experience the ways climate change is already affecting vulnerable Australians, and advocates for governments to act on the principle of precaution.

In 2008, Alex was awarded an Australian Post-graduate Award to conduct PhD research, and chose to investigate the social dimensions of climate change.

Alex is active in the global social movement calling for a proactive response to climate change, emphasising the critical need to rapidly reduce carbon emissions and eventually move to a zero net carbon global economy, as well as advocating for equity and care in responding to climate change impacts.

“I first became aware of climate change when I heard David Suzuki explaining how human activities, including burning fossil fuels and deforestation, act to intensify the greenhouse effect. Over the decades since then, I’ve become increasingly concerned about climate change.”

 

You can find some of the findings of Alex Bhathal’s research study on how people are perceiving and experiencing the impacts of climate change here.

Alex spent a year documenting the nature of climate displacement in the Asia-Pacific region, and in 2008, attended the UN special Conference on the Environment, Forced Migration and Social Vulnerability in Bonn, Germany, and presented her paper on the campaign to protect the rights of people displaced by climate change in the Asia-Pacific.