DKN Working Group RiskTransScens

DKN (German Committee Future Earth) Working Group on “Technology risk profiles for sustainable climate scenarios” (RiskTransScens)

Anthropogenic climate change is already affecting all regions of the world, and with every bit of further warming, climate extremes will become more intense and frequent. Many technologies that are discussed and used to limit climate change and its consequences are themselves affected by climate change, extreme weather and critical threshold value exceedance. Technologies for climate protection, adaptation and sustainable development will in turn influence the transformation to sustainability on different spatial, temporal and functional levels.

The DKN working group RiskTransScens deals with possibilities and new methods to assess the impact of these technologies in terms of their economic, behavioral and societal aspects and their interactions. The working group will focus on bringing together research on the effects of climate change and risk and technology assessment. We intend to examine the physical and social risks associated with technologies, including transitional risks, and their distributional effects. This should enable the comparison of different risks or risk categories and stimulate and enrich the development of scenarios for a sustainable transformation. 

The working group will deal with the following research questions, among others:

• How can sustainability goals and a far-reaching implementation of technologies be integrated into the development of climate scenarios and how can the risks associated with the scenarios be assessed coherently?
• What are socially acceptable criteria for designing policies for technology-based solutions to achieve our sustainable development and climate goals?
• How are extreme events shaping the perceived impacts of global warming and the deployment of technology-based solutions?
• What are the key risk categories and metrics that should be considered when comparing risks associated with climate change and technologies that can be used at different scales and across sectors? 

The RiskTranScens working group will organize meetings and workshops over the next two years and work closely with global research networks such as the Knowledge Action Network on Emergent Risks and Extreme Events (Risk KAN), and the Global Carbon Project (GCP), as well as the BMBF funding lines CDRmare and CDRterra.

Working Group Spokesperson:

• Prof. Dr. Jana Sillmann

  University of Hamburg, Research Unit for Sustainability and Climate Risks
  Climate Statistics - Climate Extremes

• Dr. Pia-Johanna Schweizer

  Institute of Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS), Risk Governance
  Systemic risks - Risk governance - Interdisciplinary risk analysis - Sociology of risk - Risk communication and participation - Deliberative democracy

Working Group Members:

• Prof. Dr. Hermann Held

  University of Hamburg, Research Unit for Sustainability and Climate Risks
  Economics, Decision-Making under Uncertainty

• Prof. Dr. Uwe Schneider

  University of Hamburg, Research Unit for Sustainability and Climate Risks
  Sustainable Land Use Strategies

• Prof. Dr. Julia Pongratz

  Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Department of Geography
  Physical Geography and Land Use Systems - Causes and consequences of global climate change - Global carbon cycle and greenhouse gas budgets - Land use change and its impact on energy, water and biogeochemical cycles - Earth system and vegetation modeling

• Prof. Dr. Sabine Fuss

  Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC), Working Group Sustainable Resource Management and Global Change/Humboldt University Berlin
  Natural resource management, energy and agricultural economics (bioenergy, land use implications) - Decision-making under uncertainty, with a focus on portfolio selection, real options theory, stochastic optimization and robustness - Integrated assessment with a focus on climate change mitigation and adaptation (including the role of international trade, negative emission options and technologies) - Reconciling top-down and bottom-up assessments, science-policy nexus - Mechanisms for carbon management, climate-compatible development, architecture of climate agreements

• Univ-Prof. Dr. Ilona Otto

  University of Graz, Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change

• Prof. Dr. Armin Grunwald

  Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS)
  Theory of technology assessment - Ethics of technology - Concepts of sustainability - Digital transformation

• JProf. Dr. Christian Baatz

  Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel, Department of Philosophy
  Climate Ethics - Global Justice

More information on the DKN (German Committee Future Earth) and their working groups can be found on the DKN website.