Climate policy contributes to Europe’s security
02.04.2025 – In times of global crises, climate policy is a central pillar of the European security architecture. A “Kiel Policy Brief” co-authored by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) quantifies the security benefits of an ambitious EU climate policy. It results in lower energy revenues for Russia’s state budget – and thus is a strategic complement to defense, rather than a competing priority.
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Seeing Earth through AI: New initiative tackles global sustainability challenges
26/02/2025 - Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to address critical sustainability risks and challenges for both people and the planet. To explore this, the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC), the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), and Google DeepMind have launched Seeing Earth through AI. This initiative will start with the development of an open-access report to guide AI's application in sustainability science.
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Major risk assessment links climate change with Germany’s national security
13/02/2025 – A new National Interdisciplinary Climate Risk Assessment outlines the risks to Germany’s national security resulting from climate change through 2040. It provides the first comprehensive overview of the many cascading and compounding climate risks. The Assessment will be officially presented at the Munich Security Conference in February 2025. Developed under Germany’s National Security Strategy 2023, it was co-authored by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in collaboration with various partners.
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PIK expertise at COP29 in Azerbaijan
11.11.2024 - The 29th UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) takes place from 11 to 22 November 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan. The conference brings together delegates from nearly 200 countries, including leading scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), to discuss the latest scientific findings and policy measures to mitigate the climate crisis.
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Three pathways to achieve global climate and sustainable development goals
30.10.2024 - Sustainable lifestyles, green-tech innovation, and government-led transformation each offer promising routes to make significant progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement, according to a new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). The team of researchers examined how these strategies could transform consumption and production across different sectors, identifying both benefits and trade-offs for enhancing human well-being within planetary boundaries. Contrary to the belief that the path to sustainable development is increasingly out of reach, the results show that humankind has a variety of pathways to depart from its current unsustainable trajectory.
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“A shining example of dedicated leadership within global health”: Johan Rockström receives Virchow Prize 2024
15.07.2024 – Johan Rockström receives the Virchow Prize 2024. The scientific Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) receives the reward for his comprehensive approach to safeguarding both human and planetary health as well as for the introduction of the concept of planetary boundaries. The Virchow Prize recognises outstanding lifetime achievements in the field of global health that align and uphold the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda.
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Increasing nitrogen fertilization could pollute rivers and worsen water scarcity
06.02.2024 – In the 2050s, one-third of the world's rivers could be affected by water scarcity or be polluted by nitrogen. This is the result of a study by an international team of scientists, including researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and led by scientists of Wageningen University. They assessed the scarcity of clean water under ongoing climate change and show how water pollution from intensified agriculture and untreated sewage could limit clean water supply.
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Land taxation can reduce wealth inequality
11/14/2023 - Taxing land instead of capital could reduce the widening gap between rich and poor in societies, finds a new study from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). A team of scientists shows that, in a world of rising inequality, shifting the tax burden away from capital to land taxation could restore balance and promote economic growth. Especially people with little or no wealth could benefit from land taxes, for example in the form of less rapidly rising housing costs. The few municipalities, that have implemented land rent taxation so far, have used it to finance public transport, among other infrastructure investments.
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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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Stuck to the subway: less privileged people have fewer possibilities to adapt their mobility behaviour to heat
10/10/2023 - Extreme heat amplifies social inequalities when it comes to subway usage and mobility in big cities, a new study shows. Analyzing the effect of temperature on people’s mobility behavior in New York City, researchers from the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research (PIK) find that especially in low-income areas there are little possibilities for subway users to adapt to and mitigate heat by reducing mobility. This could lead to additional heat stress and increase health risks.
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John Schellnhuber new Director General at IIASA
08/02/2023 - PIK Founding Director Hans Joachim (John) Schellnhuber will take over the position of Director General at the International Institute for Applied System Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg near Vienna on 1 December 2023. His great expertise in the field of climate change has earned him worldwide recognition.
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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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Building back better: Resilience means more than bouncing back
05/11/2023 - Adapting to global shocks, transforming and creating new ways of functioning as a society: This is how reshaping a resilient future in the aftermath of a shock should look like, shows a new Nature Sustainability Perspective with PIK Director Johan Rockström.
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Unique Institute for Sustainability: Alexander Popp is Professor at the University of Kassel
05/02/2023 - Since 1st of May 2023, Alexander Popp is Professor for Sustainable Land Use and Climate Protection at the Department of Ecological Agricultural Sciences at Kassel University. A unique scientific centre, the Institute for Sustainability, is currently being established there. It deals with the challenges of sustainable development in the sense of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.
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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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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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Stuck – climate change makes people too poor to migrate
01/23/2023 - Climate change increases migration worldwide. Over the past 30 years, however, this effect has been considerably reduced as climate change weakens economic growth in the countries of the Global South. This is the research result of a team from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research comparing the observed migration flows to a scenario without the effects of climate change.
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Global inequality prevents effective climate protection in the land sector
12/08/2022 - Land-based climate protection in line with the Paris Agreement can only succeed by overcoming global inequality, according to a new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). This requires a shift towards healthier nutrition, less food waste and lower population growth. It is also necessary to put a price on greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and forestry at the global level.
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Register now for first Leibniz Network Integrated Earth System Research Conference
10/15/2022 - The first 'Integrated Earth System Research' Conference 2022, organized by the Leibniz Research Network carrying that same name, will take place in Potsdam on November 8th and 9th. Registration will close on 28 October. The meeting is dedicated to scientific advances towards a coherent understanding of the increasing human impacts on the Earth system, their societal consequences, and respective governance challenges. It brings together researchers from the natural, engineering, social sciences and the humanities for targeted dialogue and to intensify research collaboration.
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Extreme temperatures fuel online hate speech
09/08/2022 - Temperatures above or below a feel-good window of 12-21 degrees Celsius (54-70 °F) are linked to a marked rise in aggressive online behaviour across the USA, a new study finds. Analysing billions of tweets posted on the social media platform Twitter in the USA, researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research found hate speech increasing across climate zones, income groups and belief systems for temperatures too hot or too cold. This indicates limits to adaptation to extreme temperatures, and sheds light on a yet underestimated societal impact of climate change: conflict in the digital sphere with implications for both societal cohesion and mental health.
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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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SDGs failing to have meaningful impact, research warns
06/20/2022 - Sustainability has never been higher on the international agenda. But an international assessment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—the 17 global goals used by governments, companies, and NGOs worldwide to guide action towards a prosperous and just future—shows they are having limited impact, and may instead be contributing to greenwashing. Two years into the decisive decade for humanity's future on Earth, fundamental changes are needed if we are to shift onto a sustainable and resilient path, argue the authors of the study in Nature Sustainability.
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New PIK Podcast: Energy security crisis. Cost of living crisis. Climate Crisis. What's the way out?
06/17/2022 - We are in the middle of a global energy crisis. In the latest edition of the "Sustain Ability - The Potsdam Dialogues" podcast, Gunnar Luderer, Lead of the Energy Systems Research Group and Deputy Chair of the Department Transformation Pathways at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), and Laura Cozzi, Chief Energy Modeler at the International Energy Agency (IEA), discuss what is needed to accelerate the clean energy transition away from fossil fuels towards renewables, especially with regard to the war in Ukraine and the resulting tensions between Russia and the West.
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Fighting poverty and protecting the environment can only work together: Policy paper by the Potsdam Institute for the German Environment Ministry
06/02/2022 - A decent living for all people and better protection of nature and climate aren’t conflicting targets, a new scientific analysis highlights. Development goals such as reduced poverty and inequality, better health and education, and a secure supply of food and energy on the one hand interact closely with stabilizing the climate and preserving biodiversity on the other. Only together can these goals be achieved, shows a report by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) for the German Environment Ministry on the occasion of the Stockholm+50 summit which is starting today.
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How to avoid eating the world: From degrowth to a sustainable food system transformation
05/16/2022 - Proponents of degrowth have long argued that economic growth is detrimental to the environment. Now scientists show that concerning the food sector, curbing growth alone would not make our food system sustainable – but changing what we eat and putting a price on carbon would. In a first, a group led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) used a quantitative food and land system model to gauge the effects of degrowth and efficiency proposals on the food sector’s greenhouse gas emissions. They find that combining a dietary shift, emissions pricing, and international income transfers could make the world’s food system emissions-neutral by the end of the 21st century – providing at the same time a healthier nutrition for a growing world population.
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Sustaining Peace Amidst the Climate Crisis: PIK Scientists at the Federal Foreign Office
05/04/2022 - How can data and innovative technologies be used for climate protection and crisis prevention?
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PIK-Podcast: No going back? How climate change drives migration
03/01/2022 - Climate change makes people lose their homes. Barbora Sedova, PIK Co-Lead of the FutureLab Security, Ethnic Conflicts and Migration, in dialogue with Chris Hodder, the first UN Climate Security and Environmental Advisor to Somalia, on climate change and its impacts on migration, displacement and even conflict.
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Potsdam Summer School 2022: Towards a Sustainable Transformation
02/22/2022 - Climate, Energy and Nature in a Changing World – with this overarching theme the Potsdam Summer School will continue the transdisciplinary and interactive series of events that has been held annually in Potsdam, Germany since 2014. It brings together talented early-career scientists and young professionals operating in the private sector, governmental agencies, and non-governmental organisations from many different parts of the world to discuss frontier research questions on future sustainable development and contribute their insights at this exceptional opportunity to foster cooperation and an interdisciplinary exchange of ideas. The call for applications is now open!
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WBGU invites discussion on Planetary Health
12/14/2021 - Online discussion by the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) on planetary health kicked off with an impulse statement by Sabine Gabrysch on health and global sustainability.
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