Dr. Natasha Kuruppu joined UNU-IIGH in June 2015 as part of the Planetary Change and Health programme. Natasha is a climate change adaptation specialist with a focus on Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Her doctoral thesis, which was completed at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, England, examined the interactions between climate change and water management systems in both urban and rural settings in the Micronesian atoll nation of Kiribati. Since then, Natasha has continued to lead climate adaptation research projects in Australia which have focused on adaptation related to local government, small business (SME) sector, health systems in the Pacific and community adaptation in Sydney, Australia. Natasha is also a current International Social Science Council Fellow in Urbanization; focusing on the interactions between urbanisation and climate adaptation in Pacific Islands. She recently completed a project for the International Geosphere Biosphere Program looking at the needs of SIDS classified as Least Developed Countries under global environmental change. Natasha is an Associate at the Institute for Sustainable Futures – University of Technology Sydney, Australia and also serves on the Executive Committee of the international network ‘Academics Stand Against Poverty – Oceania Chapter’ which is an international association focused on helping researchers and teachers enhance their impact on poverty. Natasha’s current focus is on understanding the governance of human health in the Asia-Pacific region under climate change and other processes environmental change with a particular interest in the role of Indigenous and local knowledge.
