Leibniz Research Network “Environmental Crises – Crisis Environments”

The Leibniz Research Network “Environ­mental Crises – Crisis Environ­ments” is dedicated to the research of the perception and gover­nance of environ­mental changes as crisis. A key to detect a crisis and to initiate political crisis manage­ment is the per­ception of a threat as urgent, existential, and uncertain in its conse­quences.

Taking this as a vantage point, the Leibniz Research Network examines under which conditions environ­mental change is perceived and contested as crisis, and which gover­nance arrange­ments foster effective and sustai­nable crisis manage­ment.

Both steps are important as the attribution of environ­mental changes as crises involves bio­physical and societal pheno­mena whose inter­action are not well under­stood so far. Further­more, these two pers­pectives on environ­mental crises include furthe­ring the resilience of contem­porary societies with regard to environ­mental changes as well as an under­standing of crisis scenarios as an oppor­tunity for sustaina­bility transfor­mations.

Participating Institutes

• German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA)
• GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
• Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH)
• Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Land­scape Research (ZALF)
• Leibniz Centre for Euro­pean Economic Research (ZEW)
• Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT)
• Leibniz Institute of Agri­cultural Develop­ment in Transition Economies (IAMO)
• Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Develop­ment (IÖR)
• Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space (IRS)
• Leibniz Institute for Tropo­spheric Research (TROPOS)
• Leibniz Institute of Vegetable and Orna­mental Crops (IGZ)
• Coordinating Institute: Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF)
• Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)
• Senckenberg Society for Nature Research (SGN)
• Leibniz Institute for Economic Re­search at the University of Munich (ifo)