“It is not only climate change. It is everything change.”

With the words of Margaret Atwood ringing in his ears, a Trent associate professor of Geography and Environmental and Resource Science/Studies will address finance and insurance sector leaders on April 24 about the impacts of climate change on agriculture, food security, biodiversity and floods.

Dr. Raul Ponce-Hernandez will be delivering the talk at the Symcor Leadership Conference being held in Toronto.

“Keeping the same paradigm of economic growth, propelled by maximizing profit at the expense of nature, is suicidal,” says Professor Ponce-Hernandez, director of Trent’s Applied Geometrics, Remote Sensing and Land Resources (GEORESLAR) lab. “We need to put our walk where the talk is. The threat is real and we all need to do our bit. Every single effort counts. The world can provide for our needs but not for our greeds.”

Symcor helped establish a research fund to support the GEORESLAR lab in finding agricultural solutions that are climate-resilient. That research involves the use of advanced technology, such as multispectral proximal sensing with drones and crop-growth computer modeling, aimed at developing more sustainable and resilient agricultural practices.

“Through this relationship, the CEO of Symcor extended the invitation to speak given the need to explore the connection between climate change and adaptation and mitigation efforts that will inevitably require fairly substantial funding,” says Prof. Ponce-Hernandez, who has served as member of United Nations climate change working groups and is a consultant to that body’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

Founded in 1996, Symcor is a leading Canadian provider of business processing and client communications management services.

Learn more about Trent’s Environmental and Resource Studies.