Alex Lo is currently affiliated with the Climate Change Research Institute at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He completed his PhD in Environmental Studies at the Australian National University in 2011. He was affiliated with the Griffith Climate Change Response Program at Griffith University, Australia (Lecturer, 2011-2015) and the Department of Geography at the University of Hong Kong (Assistant Professor, 2015-2019). Prior to these appointments, he held a research position at Vienna, Austria, and coordinated environmental education projects for the Hong Kong Government. Since 2018, he has been an Adjunct Professor at the Guangzhou University, China.
His research is closely aligned with the analytical problems of Adaptiveness and Agency identified in the Earth System Governance Science Plan. A focus of his recent research is climate change adaptation and environmental risk perception. He is developing a research program for understanding how small businesses adapt to climate change impacts, which aims to 1) clarify the complex relationships between norms of social relation and trust, environmental risk perception, and operational adjustments on the part of small business owners, and 2) propose an alternative framework for understanding localized economic adaptation and enhancing the adaptive capacity of small businesses in climate-challenged coastal communities. The research addresses the nexus between economic development, social capital, and climate adaptation. Moreover, he has been studying the use of market mechanisms for climate change mitigation in China, focusing on issues around governance and the role of non-state actors, notably markets and businesses. His recent research activities are concentrated in middle-income countries or regions, notably China.