Global recognition for a career spent bridging science, policy and the everyday realities of vulnerable cities and communities
The PEOPLE Project is delighted to share that Dr Debra Roberts, a member of our Steering Group, will be inducted into the Earth Hall of Fame Kyoto in November 2026 — one of the highest honours given for lifetime contributions to global environmental conservation.
About the honour
The Earth Hall of Fame Kyoto was established to recognise, in perpetuity, individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the conservation of the global environment. It takes its name from Kyoto as the birthplace of the Kyoto Protocol, and inductees are commemorated at the very venue that hosted COP3 in 1997, where the Protocol was adopted. Past inductees include figures such as Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai, former UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres, and Potsdam Institute director Johan Rockström — placing Dr Roberts among a small, distinguished group recognised for shaping the global environmental agenda.
Dr Roberts brings a distinctive profile to this list: three decades leading environmental planning, biodiversity and climate protection work for the eThekwini Municipality (Durban, South Africa), alongside her role as Co-Chair of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for its Sixth Assessment cycle — the first local government official, and the first woman from Africa, to hold that position. Her work has consistently connected grassroots, city-level practice with the highest levels of international climate science and policy.
In her own words
Reflecting on the induction, Dr Roberts shared the following message:
“We all know anything worthwhile is achieved by people collaborating towards a common goal. Over my career I have been privileged to work with some of the best practitioners, policy makers and scientists in the world. I am deeply grateful for the generosity with which they shared their knowledge and experience and the long hours we have spent working together on biodiversity, climate change, resilience, sustainability and well-being issues at scales from the local to the international. This award acknowledges our collective success.
This award also helps highlight a group that is often not in the limelight – urban practitioners who use local knowledge and science to plan and build better cities, create more sustainable infrastructure and improve the well-being of poor and vulnerable human and natural communities. It underscores the value of work done at the grassroots level in the imperfect places that most people live and confirms that ordinary people working hard and courageously in local places can still make a difference globally.”
What this means for the PEOPLE Project
Dr Roberts’ recognition resonates directly with the mission of the PEOPLE Project. Her message about the value of grassroots, locally-grounded knowledge sits at the heart of what PEOPLE has been built to do: strengthen participatory early warning systems by ensuring that the people most exposed to climate risk — often those least visible in global policy conversations — are central to the systems designed to protect them.
Her induction is a timely affirmation for the project’s work across Southern Africa and South Asia, where PEOPLE partners with informal and community-based early warning networks alongside national meteorological and hydrological services.
As a member of the PEOPLE Steering Group, Dr Roberts has brought this same perspective to the project’s direction, drawing on her experience translating community-level realities into policy and investment cases that global institutions can act on.
