Sarah Burch

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Sarah Lynn Burch is a Canadian environmental scientist and a Canada Research Chair at the University of Waterloo. Her work focuses on how communities can respond to climate change and turn plans into action. She also leads research on sustainability governance and how small businesses can support global efforts to reduce emissions.

Education and career: Burch studied international relations and environmental sciences at the University of Calgary. She earned her PhD at the University of British Columbia and did postdoctoral work at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. She joined the University of Waterloo in 2013 as an assistant professor and coordinated research fellows for the Earth System Governance Project. In 2015 she was named a Canada Research Chair in Sustainability Governance. She directs the SPROUT Lab (Sustainability Policy Research on Urban Transformations) and helped create the world’s first massive open online course on climate change.

IPCC and public messaging: Burch contributed to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report and is a lead author for the Sixth Assessment Report. In 2022, she emphasized that the world has about three years to cut emissions to avoid a climate catastrophe.