College of Architecture, Art, and Planning
Rhea Lopes is a second-year graduate student in the City and Regional Planning Department interested in the intersection of environmental sustainability and economic development. Rhea is from Mumbai, India which is one of the top ten cities most vulnerable to climate change in the world. This drives her interest in planning to enhance resilience to climate change without compromising economic empowerment.
At current, she assists the Working Group on Disasters at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. Additionally, she works with the Kota Kita Foundation, an NGO in Indonesia to develop a pilot program for inclusive and community-centric development of the Pepe river in Surakarta through a multi-stakeholder engagement process. At COP24, Rhea will be assisting the Climate Smart Agriculture Youth Network, an organization based in Cameroon that advocates and empowers climate-smart agricultural practices across the world. Having worked towards climate resilience and development in different contexts, she is interested to understand the negotiations that shape such projects at the international scale.
