Headline: News 2022

The Berlin Senate has set itself the goal to make the city "climate-neutral" by 2045. For that to happen, the everyday lives of Berliners are going to have to change in a number of areas, including housing, mobility, and energy use. To get the ball rolling, the Senate has taken up an initiative from civil society and created the Citizens’ Assembly on Climate Change, which brings together randomly selected citizens to discuss climate mitigation measures in the city. The IASS will be providing scientific input for the work of the assembly.

Global heating, pandemics, cyberattacks, and large-scale forced migrations are among the increasingly interconnected and mutually reinforcing challenges faced by humanity over the last decades. A team of scientists has taken a look at the triggers and consequences of overlapping crises (polycrises), investigating what processes facilitate the interaction of crisis-triggering events as well as how this interaction can be prevented, or mitigated. The team has also developed an analytical framework that helps identify complex and interrelated crises.

What approach must sustainability research take in order to sucessfully advance the transformation toward a sustainable future? In a new publication, IASS Scientific Director Ortwin Renn outlines an approach that integrates different research concepts.

Company representatives expect that digitalisation will improve the environmental sustainability of their organisations. However, actual experience paints a less positive picture: new technologies have so far largely failed to deliver anticipated improvements in resource efficiency. According to the researchers behind a new study, more political support is needed to harness the potential of Industry 4.0.

People with respiratory diseases are more strongly affected by air pollution. They are at higher risk even in cities where limit values are only occasionally exceeded. In Berlin, a study found that the hospitalisation rate of patients with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) increased with higher nitrogen dioxide concentrations.

Can digitalisation contribute to the development of a more sustainable economy? Sustainability has emerged as a key concern for many DAX companies – but only insofar as their customers call for improvement. Most are reluctant to make more sweeping changes. However, a few pioneering companies are using their digital prowess to help tackle some of the challenges facing society.

Satellite data have played an important role in efforts to monitor the rate of deforestation in the Amazon Basin for decades. But the way these data are used has changed under the government of President Jair Bolsonaro. His supporters are questioning the validity of scientific findings as a means to propagate a worldview that puts profits first.

The cement industry is responsible for about seven per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. To encourage the decarbonisation of this industry, policymakers and the industry must find ways to incentivise reductions. A study from the Heriot-Watt University and the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) gives us a first look at how CO2 mineralisation can reduce emissions from cement production by up to 33 per cent at no additional cost – under the right conditions.

The systemic and uncertain risks facing the world today can have cascading impacts across systems and sectors. To better understand and respond to these risks, an integrated perspective that incorporates the inherently complex nature of climate-related hazards, vulnerability, exposure and impacts is needed. This insight is at the centre of a new briefing note co-authored by IASS research group leader Pia-Johanna Schweizer and published by the International Science Council, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Risk Knowledge Action Network.