Focus: Systemic Risks

Global environmental problems do not only affect ecosystems, but also have consequences at the social and economic level. Due to the complex nature of these problems, estimating the interdependencies of effects is difficult and involves a high degree of uncertainty. For the management of global environmental risks, disciplinary approaches considering only partial aspects are not sufficient. In the research area, global environmental problems are therefore interdisciplinary analyzed using systemic approaches.

The research area "Systemic Risks" examines global environmental problems from a social-ecological and social science perspective. On the one hand, societal drivers of global environmental change are examined. On the other hand, concepts for interdisciplinary assessment of environmental risks as well as levers for sustainable transformation of nature-society systems on different levels are addressed.