Magnus Benzie

Magnus Benzie is an affiliated researcher at SEI Oxford. His expertise is on the assessment and governance of cross-border, cascading climate risks.

Magnus has worked for 20 years to understand the ways in which climate change will impact society. During this time, he has become familiar with the state of our scientific knowledge on climate and future socio-economic change. During his 13 years with SEI, he learned and developed novel methods for identifying, assessing and analysing complex, cascading risks. He works with stakeholders from across the world, particularly in Africa, Asia and Europe, to bring foresight into policy.

As a senior research fellow at SEI, Magnus established a new field of research on cascading climate risk, co-founded the Adaptation Without Borders (AWB) global partnership, lead and contributed to a number of influential global reports — among them, the Sixth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the flagship AWB publication, The Global Transboundary Risk Report 2023. Magnus also engaged with and influenced the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations on adaptation over several years, developed expertise in supply chains and trade, and raised funding to design and co-lead a number of innovative projects on climate resilience.

Prior to that, as a specialist consultant on climate change, he helped shape the early phases of national and regional adaptation planning in the UK and Europe by supporting governments and businesses to understand and prepare for future climate change.

Magnus’s skills include climate risk assessment methods, participatory foresight exercises, facilitation and moderation, creative research design, team and consortium building and mentoring. He has in-depth knowledge of international climate risk propagation, global and national adaptation politics and strategic resilience governance.