Novel perspectives on cross-border cascading climate change impacts and systemic risks
10/27/2023 – Transitioning towards climate-adaptive and resilient societies – that was the overarching aim of the conference “Cross-border climate change impacts and systemic risks in Europe and beyond” at Potsdam-Institute of Climate Impact Research (PIK). For three days in mid-October, 150 scientists from all over the world came together across disciplines to better understand and respond to the emerging topic of cross-border climate impacts and risks.
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Four large-scale household data collections implemented to support research on climate change adaptation in agricultural systems
25/10/2023 - Over the past year, the working group 'Adaptation in Agricultural Systems' (AAS) started implementing four large-scale household data collections. These data collections will support the overall aim of better integrating empirical- and model-based research on climate change adaptation in the agricultural sector within the AAS group.
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Diabetes, dementia, depression: Adapting fuel taxes could benefit people’s health
10/13/2023 - The health benefits from walking and cycling are so significant that they should be included in fuel tax design, shows of a new study published in the journal Economica. Optimal fuel tax rates would increase by 44% in the US and by 38% in the UK if the costs for the health system that arise from too little exercise were taken into account. The revenue could be used for low-carbon transport or to compensate affected households to build support for sustainable transport.
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Meat taxes can be designed to avoid overburdening low-income households
04/10/2023 - As low-income households spend a much larger share of their earnings on food, consumption taxes on meat tend to hit them harder. New research, published in Nature Food, indicates how meat tax design and redistribution of tax revenues can ease such adverse distributional impacts.
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Urban Transformations team receive Outstanding Article Award of Sustainability Science Journal
02/10/2023 - The paper "A systems model of SDG target influence on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development" co-authored by RD2 scientists Anne Warchold, Prajal Pradhan and Jürgen Kropp, received the Outstanding Article Award conducted by the Sustainability Science Journal for papers published in 2022.
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On the DWD's Summer Report 2023: In the midst of climate change
08/30/2023 - The German Weather Service (Deutscher Wetterdienst, DWD) has presented its 2023 summer report. PIK researcher Fred Hattermann comments: "This year's precipitation cannot compensate for the precipitation deficit that has accumulated over the past years."
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From Australia back to Germany: PIK Alumna Katharina Waha appointed professor at University Augsburg
01/08/2023 - After 8 years abroad, in which she continued to work together with the 'Landuse and Resilience' Working Group at PIK as a guest researcher, Katharina Waha has accepted an appointment as 'Professor for Climate Resilience and Human-Made Ecosystems' at the newly created 'Centre for Climate Resilience' in Augsburg.
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Empowering Himalayan Sustainability: Workshop Strengthens Teaching and Research on SDGs
16/08/2023 - The Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in Thailand hosted a 3-day workshop titled "Strengthening Teaching and Research on Sustainable Development Goals: Curriculum Transfer and Capacity Building" from 13-16 August 2023. The workshop is a part of the ForHimSDG (Promoting Himalayan Development by Strengthening Teaching and Research on Sustainable Development Goals) project, lead by PIK in collaboration with the AIT and Kathmandu University and funded by DAAD.
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Minister Svenja Schulze and PIK highlight the importance of increasing research on Loss and Damage
26/06/2023 - The second edition of the “Berlin Insights Series on Climate Change and Development”, jointly organised by the German Development Ministry (BMZ) and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), gave a stage to the discussion on how science can support politics and practitioners in the response to the losses and damages caused by the climate crisis.
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Uzbek Minister of Ecology Visits Potsdam Institute for Climate Research to Enhance German-Uzbek Collaboration
22/06/2023 Uzbekistan's Minister of Ecology, Natural Resources and Climate Change Mr. Aziz Abdukhakimov, led a delegation to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) to meet with scientist and hydrology experts. The visit aimed to strengthen German-Uzbek collaboration in science, higher education, and capacity building to address the pressing issue of climate change in Uzbekistan.
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Women’s diet quality in India could be improved by forest foods
06/22/2023 - Wild foods from forests and common land play an important role in improving the quality of diets among Indian women, a new study finds. The harvest of wild, nutritious food, especially during June and July, is of vital importance to vulnerable women in India, where more than 80 percent are estimated to be micronutrient deficient and suffer from poor health.
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Cross-sectoral PROCLIAS-ISIMIP workshop 2023 in Prague
14/06/2023 - Another successful cross-sectoral PROCLIAS/ ISIMIP workshop filled with plenary and parallel sessions on ISIMIP simulation results, data and protocols for climate impact simulations, IPCC representative key risks and cross-sectoral climate impacts took place, this time in Prague.
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PIK expertise at "Leibniz in the Bundestag"
05/26/2023 - From hydrogen to the EU climate goals, from moorland protection to the animal welfare tax: researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) were represented across all research areas with numerous topics at "Leibniz in the Bundestag". With this political format, the Leibniz Association annually offers members of the German Bundestag one-on-one discussions with scientists.
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Large-scale nature conservation efforts alone will not preserve benefits for our societies
05/16/2023 - The enlargement of protected areas and carbon price incentives for reforestation alone will not stop biodiversity decline and the ongoing loss of critical ecosystem functions, if they are not accompanied by measures that also target managed landscapes. A new study published in Nature Communications, led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), shows that even in scenarios with a high demand for land it is possible to maintain biodiversity-friendly landscapes, which also provide critical services such as pollination and healthy soils. The research demonstrates that land use is not a zero-sum game but that it matters where farmland is located in order to promote landscape diversity. With the right incentives, farmed landscapes could be managed in a way that enhances the numerous benefits nature offers to society and that support the biodiversity conservation targets of protected areas.
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RD2@EGU 2023
24-27/04/2023 - The European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly brings together geoscientists from all over the world, providing a forum for scientists to present and discuss their research with peers. This years General Assembly took place from 24 to 27 April 2023 and featured several contributions by scientists from the Climate Resilience Department at PIK.
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High-level Pakistani delegation visit at PIK
05/12/2023 - A high-level Pakistani delegation, along with the GIZ Pakistan, visited the PIK research department Climate Resilience, to exchange ideas and approaches related to climate impacts and adaptation in the Pakistani context.
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Sustainability conference of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture with Prof. Lotze-Campen
04/05/2023 - How can we transform our agriculture and food system and make it more sustainable? This was the central question at the sustainability conference in Kirchberg, Germany, organized by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL). German minister of agriculture Cem Özdemir and vice-president of the European Commission Frans Timmermans discussed the changes necessary on a national and EU-level with experts and young people.
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CashEval Workshop in Ulaanbaatar
On April, 20th a dissemination workshop entitled "Living with climate risk in Mongolia" took place in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Scientific insights on the vulnerability of herding households to extreme winter events (dzud) in Mongolia were shared with local and international stakeholders. Participants also explored to what extent policy instruments can help households respond and adapt to dzud. The focus was on index-based livestock insurance and forecast-based humanitarian assistance.
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Congratulations Dr. Arumugam!
27/03/2023 - Ponraj Arumugam successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Geospatial crop yield modeling to support climate risk management" at the University of Kassel.
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Sustainability beyond Sustainable Development Goals – ERC grant for Prajal Pradhan
02/24/2023 - For his proposal “Transformation towards long-term sustainability beyond Sustainable Development Goals” Prajal Pradhan, senior scientist at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) receives the highly prestigious HORIZON Starting Grant by the European Research Council (ERC) amounting to 1,5 million Euro.
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From forest resilience to power grids to loss and damage: PIK Research Days
02/22/2023 - Hot topics were presented in talks and discussed among scientists at the annual ‘Research Days’ of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). Virtually all members of the institute gathered for the 2-day exchange, the first one which happened face-to-face after the online-only times of COVID pandemic. Once a year, the entire institute comes together to update one another on its findings, new methods and challenges – and to discuss new frontiers to be investigated.
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FABLE: How to get food and land use systems on track
02/03/2023 - Sustainable futures for food and land use systems are only possible with coordinated, major efforts around the world in the next decade. This is what a team of researchers, including PIK, from 20 countries found by using FABLE (Food, Agriculture, Biodiversity, Land-Use and Energy) modeling tools. The results are now published in a Special Issue.
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Berlin could produce much of its vegetables locally
01/27/2023 - Berlin could produce a surprisingly large proportion of its vegetable requirements itself if unused areas were used for this purpose, such as flat roofs, allotments, cemetery areas that are no longer in use, or even supermarket parking lots. Researchers have now calculated this. However, the use of this land is tied to many preconditions.
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Climate, Development, Economics - Kati Krähnert is a Professor at RWI and Bochum University
01/20/2023 - From Potsdam's Telegrafenberg to the Ruhr - since January 1, 2023, Kati Krähnert is Professor of Climate Change and Development at the Faculty of Economics at Ruhr University Bochum. There she researches how the lives of people in the Global South are affected by climate change and how policies need to be designed if they are to improve household climate resilience. She was appointed jointly by the Ruhr University and RWI - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research.
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Smart nitrogen management can strongly reduce pollution
01/06/2023 - To increase food and feed supply, agriculture has used more and more industrial nitrogen fertilizers and manure. However, over half of these nitrogen inputs to croplands are currently lost to the environment, contributing to air pollution and its related diseases, water eutrophication, soil acidification, climate change, and biodiversity loss. Nitrogen pollution has become a global challenge and next crisis. An international team of researchers explored cost-effective nitrogen mitigation strategies for global croplands in a new study, now published in Nature.
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New PIK Podcast: The bitter taste of loss & damage
12/16/2022 - What does coffee have to do with climate change & loss and damage? Koko Warner from the UNFCCC Secretariat and Christoph Gornott from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research PIK dive into the loss & damage debate.
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Europe's forests increasingly under pressure
12/12/2022 - European forests are increasingly affected by natural disturbances, a new monitoring study shows - and climate change is likely exacerbating this, according to the results of an international team of scientists.
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Potsdam researchers amongst top 1% most cited worldwide
11/14/2022 - For the fifth year in a row, researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) are among the top 1 percent of the globally most scientifically influential authors. The renowned "Highly Cited" ranking is published once a year by Clarivate Analytics' science platform Web of Science. The ranking is based on the number of times researchers are cited in other academics' works - one of the most important indicators of scientific relevance. Twelve PIK researchers are listed, just like last year, including the institute's directors, and from all research departments.
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Dr. Amanda Wendt at GLOHRA Day 2022
15/10/2022 – Dr. Amanda Wendt, working group leader of the Climate Change and Health group at PIK, participated in a panel discussion during the annual symposium of the German Alliance for Global Health Research (GLOHRA). Together with other representatives of GLOHRA research projects, she discussed ‘Community partnerships in global health research’.
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Towards food security despite climate crisis and war
09/01/2022 - To secure the world's food supply, a shift toward more plant-based and less animal-based foods is needed, researchers explain in a 'Policy Brief' published today. The Russian war of aggression on Ukraine has triggered a shortage of some agricultural products as well as gas-produced mineral fertilizers. As a result, food prices are rising. At the same time, droughts and flash floods threaten crops worldwide as the climate crisis intensifies. The researchers show the connections - and make concrete recommendations on how a food turnaround could be initiated.
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