Wuppertal Institute
Encyclopedia
The Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy is a German
research institution that explores and develops models, strategies
and instruments to support sustainable development
at local, national and international level. Sustainability
research
at the Wuppertal Institute focuses on ecology
and its relation to economy
and society
. Special emphasis is put on analysing and supporting technological and social innovations that decouple prosperity of economic growth
from the use of natural resource
s.
Beijing, the University of Osnabrück
and the University of Wuppertal
. A cooperation agreement was also reached with the University of Kassel
. Furthermore, the Wuppertal Institute and the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research (iENTIRE) agreed upon corporate research. Joint research projects with the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) in Japan and The Energy and Resources Institute
(TERI) in India are regularly conducted.
The Wuppertal Institute
understands itself as an intermediary between science, economy and politics; therefore, its sustainability research design is application-oriented. It has the legal status of a non-profit limited company
(gemeinnützige Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung, according to German law), based in Wuppertal
and receives basic funding from the Federal State North Rhine-Westphalia
, the sole owner of the Wuppertal Institute. The major part of its funding derives from third-party
research projects. Wuppertal Institute’s clients cover governmental organisations ranging from local authorities to ministries at both state and national levels; business and industry ranging from medium-sized companies to corporate groups and industrial associations; civil society ranging from environmental associations to churches, trade unions and foundations.
The staff of the Wuppertal Institute numbers approximately 170. Two-thirds are research staff and come from a wide variety of background disciplines: natural and environmental sciences, geography, systems sciences, engineering, planning, law, economics, and political and social science. The Institute employs roughly equal numbers of women and men.
An International Advisory Board stands for the independence and the Institute’s scientific quality and provides advice with regard to strategic basic research issues
. The Institute's mission - formulated in its partnership agreement - was first of all to "promote measures and initiatives to secure the climate situation, to improve the environment and to save energy, as an interface between the scientific pursuit of knowledge and its practical application”. Founding President Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker advocated a resource strategy founded on reducing resource use by means of what he called an "efficiency revolution" pointing the way towards new models of prosperity. Efficiency is the cornerstone of the book Factor Four - Doubling Wealth, Halving Resource Use by Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, Amory
and Hunter Lovins
(Rocky Mountain Institute
, USA). They assembled fifty examples of successful products using half the usual amount of natural resources, including hypercars, "Passivhaus
", superwindows, long-lasting furniture and a summer holiday in the Austrian Alps. The book was accepted as a report to the Club of Rome
and was on the best-seller lists for several months. It has been translated into more than ten languages.
Peter Hennicke had studied and worked on using efficiency potentials in the field of energy use before he came to the Wuppertal Institute. Here, he intensified research in this area as head of the Energy Division; later on he succeeded Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker as president. Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek, the vice-president at that time, found a large audience proposing his MIPS
concept for gauging material input per service unit and identifying "ecological rucksacks" that "carry" products and services when they arrive at the consumer. He was aware of the fact that the then prevailing environmental policy was not paying enough attention to the great material flows; he advocated that besides already existing successful legal measures for pollutant emissions
limitation it would be necessary to reduce the material flows in order to conserve the finite material, energy and nature resources. With his concept of the “Ecological rucksack” he introduced his ideas into the scientific and political debates.
In 2001, the Tokyo-based Takeda Foundation awarded Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker and Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek a price worth one hundred million yen for their concepts "Factor Four", "MIPS" and "ecological rucksack", an expression of the Institute's international recognition.
Following the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the implementation of Agenda 21
was high on the (environmental) policy agenda in many nations. The first attempts were very timid and showed the lack of experience in implementing the new leading principle called sustainable development. The 1995 report Zukunftsfähiges Deutschland (published as “Greening the North”), commissioned by BUND and Misereor, was to remedy this: the Wuppertal Institute team, headed by Reinhard Loske and Raimund Bleischwitz, pioneered a new methodology. Beginning with an estimate of the Earth's carrying capacity, the "environmental space", this study developed leading principles to help us Germans avoid overusing the environmental space to which we are "entitled". The principles are based on concepts such as efficiency and sufficiency
.
Prof. Dr. Wolfang Sachs, one of the best-known scientists of the Wuppertal Institute, member of the Club of Rome and lead author at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), directed the study “Sustainable Germany in a Globalised World”. It was published as a book in October 2008 by Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND
), Church Development Service (Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst - EED) and "Friends of the Earth
" to stimulate the social discussion on a globally sustainable development.
Agreed in 1997, the Kyoto Protocol
took the global nature of the climate problem into account at least to some extent, even if it was ratified only many years later. The Kyoto Protocol was the first international agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions
. The Wuppertal Institute's Climate Policy Division was closely involved in setting this milestone in the international climate debate.
At the Earth Summit 2002
in Johannesburg, ten years after the Rio Conference, the international agreements on sustainable development were updated with new timetables and priorities for action. The World Summit also formulated an integrated concept of science and policy in its Plan of Implementation. This plan was implemented both methodologically and in terms of its content in the Wuppertal Institute's research programme in 2003, whose conceptual research agenda was restructured under the keyword “Sustainability Research”.
In August 2005, the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) and the Wuppertal Institute jointly founded the Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production
(CSCP). As a member of the globally cooperating UNEP Centres, its mission is to develop practically oriented contributions to the ten-year Sustainable Consumption and Production programme that was agreed upon at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002.
research teams bring together the expertise of scientists and economists as well as geographers and spatial planners, engineers, philosophers and historians.
The focus of the four Research Groups is:
Future Energy and Mobility Structures
Research Group 1 examines questions of technology and infrastructure, taking a systems analysis approach. In the fields of energy and mobility it explores what technical and social innovations will facilitate the transition to sustainable structures, what implications this process has and what chances it offers. Alongside dynamic potential analyses it seeks to evaluate technology with a view to finding coherent paths of development.
Energy, Transport and Climate Policy
Research Group 2 focuses on strategies and instruments for effective and integrated energy, transport and climate policies at the local, regional, national and international level. A central theme is the synergy
effects of policy strategies that support the sustainable development of energy and transport systems as well as climate protection
generally. Policy instruments in the field of energy end-use efficiency are a further focus.
Material Flows and Resource Management
Research Group 3 investigates material flows from extraction of raw materials through to final disposal, taking account of the global "ecological rucksack" model as well as the land use involved. It develops concepts, strategies and instruments to improve resource productivity
and sustainable resource management from the regional and sectoral levels to the international level.
Sustainable Production and Consumption
Research Group 4 develops instruments, concepts and strategies to promote the transition to more sustainable patterns of production and consumption. The research centres on the development and market launch of products considered sustainable in terms of their entire life cycle
as well as production processes optimised right the way along the added value chain
.
Cross-Cutting Subjects
Focus projects bring together core issues addressed by the research groups. In Cross-Cutting Subjects scientists from different Research Groups join forces.
Berlin Office
As a branch of the Wuppertal Institute, the Berlin Office strengthens the research-based consulting that we provide for the world of policy. It also enhances our capacity to canvass for custom in the German capital, especially against the background of the European Union's eastern enlargement. In addition, the Berlin Office promotes cooperation between the Wuppertal Institute and other academic and research institutions in Berlin. This local presence enables us to work on projects in close coordination and cooperation with principals in the German capital.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
research institution that explores and develops models, strategies
Strategy
Strategy, a word of military origin, refers to a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. In military usage strategy is distinct from tactics, which are concerned with the conduct of an engagement, while strategy is concerned with how different engagements are linked...
and instruments to support sustainable development
Sustainable development
Sustainable development is a pattern of resource use, that aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but also for generations to come...
at local, national and international level. Sustainability
Sustainability
Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...
research
Research
Research can be defined as the scientific search for knowledge, or as any systematic investigation, to establish novel facts, solve new or existing problems, prove new ideas, or develop new theories, usually using a scientific method...
at the Wuppertal Institute focuses on ecology
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
and its relation to economy
Economy
An economy consists of the economic system of a country or other area; the labor, capital and land resources; and the manufacturing, trade, distribution, and consumption of goods and services of that area...
and society
Society
A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...
. Special emphasis is put on analysing and supporting technological and social innovations that decouple prosperity of economic growth
Economic growth
In economics, economic growth is defined as the increasing capacity of the economy to satisfy the wants of goods and services of the members of society. Economic growth is enabled by increases in productivity, which lowers the inputs for a given amount of output. Lowered costs increase demand...
from the use of natural resource
Natural resource
Natural resources occur naturally within environments that exist relatively undisturbed by mankind, in a natural form. A natural resource is often characterized by amounts of biodiversity and geodiversity existent in various ecosystems....
s.
Organisation and Networks
The Wuppertal Institute collaborates with a multitude of universities and institutes in Germany and abroad. It has for instance has formal cooperation agreements with the Center for Environment and Energy Research and Studies (CEERS) in Teheran, the Department of Environmental Science and Engineering of the Tsinghua UniversityTsinghua University
Tsinghua University , colloquially known in Chinese as Qinghua, is a university in Beijing, China. The school is one of the nine universities of the C9 League. It was established in 1911 under the name "Tsinghua Xuetang" or "Tsinghua College" and was renamed the "Tsinghua School" one year later...
Beijing, the University of Osnabrück
University of Osnabrück
The University of Osnabrück is a public university located in the city of Osnabrück in Lower Saxony, Germany.In 2010 it was attended by 9,298 students. In 2009, the staff of 1,570 consisted of 214 professors, 662 additional academic personnel and 694 non-academic personnel...
and the University of Wuppertal
University of Wuppertal
The University of Wuppertal is a German scientific institution, located in Wuppertal, North Rhine-Westphalia.The university, the full German name of which is Bergische Universität Wuppertal , was formed in 1972 and is located in the city of Wuppertal, within the state of North Rhine-Westphalia,...
. A cooperation agreement was also reached with the University of Kassel
University of Kassel
The University of Kassel, founded in 1970, is one of the newer universities in the state of Hesse. The university is in Kassel, and as of September 2010 has about 18,113 students...
. Furthermore, the Wuppertal Institute and the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research (iENTIRE) agreed upon corporate research. Joint research projects with the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) in Japan and The Energy and Resources Institute
The Energy and Resources Institute
The Energy and Resources Institute, commonly known as TERI , established in 1974, is a research institute based in New Delhi focusing its research activities in the fields of energy, environment and sustainable development.-Introduction:TERI is an independent, not-for-profit, research institute...
(TERI) in India are regularly conducted.
The Wuppertal Institute
Institute
An institute is a permanent organizational body created for a certain purpose. Often it is a research organization created to do research on specific topics...
understands itself as an intermediary between science, economy and politics; therefore, its sustainability research design is application-oriented. It has the legal status of a non-profit limited company
Limited company
A limited company is a company in which the liability of the members or subscribers of the company is limited to what they have invested or guaranteed to the company. Limited companies may be limited by shares or by guarantee. And the former of these, a limited company limited by shares, may be...
(gemeinnützige Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung, according to German law), based in Wuppertal
Wuppertal
Wuppertal is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in and around the Wupper river valley, and is situated east of the city of Düsseldorf and south of the Ruhr area. With a population of approximately 350,000, it is the largest city in the Bergisches Land...
and receives basic funding from the Federal State North Rhine-Westphalia
North Rhine-Westphalia
North Rhine-Westphalia is the most populous state of Germany, with four of the country's ten largest cities. The state was formed in 1946 as a merger of the northern Rhineland and Westphalia, both formerly part of Prussia. Its capital is Düsseldorf. The state is currently run by a coalition of the...
, the sole owner of the Wuppertal Institute. The major part of its funding derives from third-party
Wiktionary
Wiktionary is a multilingual, web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in 158 languages...
research projects. Wuppertal Institute’s clients cover governmental organisations ranging from local authorities to ministries at both state and national levels; business and industry ranging from medium-sized companies to corporate groups and industrial associations; civil society ranging from environmental associations to churches, trade unions and foundations.
The staff of the Wuppertal Institute numbers approximately 170. Two-thirds are research staff and come from a wide variety of background disciplines: natural and environmental sciences, geography, systems sciences, engineering, planning, law, economics, and political and social science. The Institute employs roughly equal numbers of women and men.
An International Advisory Board stands for the independence and the Institute’s scientific quality and provides advice with regard to strategic basic research issues
History
The Wuppertal Institute started its research work in 1991 headed by Ernst Ulrich von WeizsäckerErnst Ulrich von Weizsäcker
Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker is a German scientist and politician.He is son of the physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and nephew of the former German President Richard von Weizsäcker....
. The Institute's mission - formulated in its partnership agreement - was first of all to "promote measures and initiatives to secure the climate situation, to improve the environment and to save energy, as an interface between the scientific pursuit of knowledge and its practical application”. Founding President Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker advocated a resource strategy founded on reducing resource use by means of what he called an "efficiency revolution" pointing the way towards new models of prosperity. Efficiency is the cornerstone of the book Factor Four - Doubling Wealth, Halving Resource Use by Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, Amory
Amory, Mississippi
Amory is a city in Monroe County, Mississippi, United States. The population is 6,956 as of the 2000 census.-History:Amory was the first planned city in Mississippi. The Kansas City, Memphis & Birmingham Railroad needed a mid-point between Memphis, Tennessee and Birmingham, Alabama for their...
and Hunter Lovins
Hunter Lovins
L. Hunter Lovins is an author and a promoter of sustainable development for over 30 years, is president of Natural Capitalism Solutions, a 5013 non-profit in Longmont, Colorado and the Chief Insurgent of the Madrone Project...
(Rocky Mountain Institute
Rocky Mountain Institute
Rocky Mountain Institute is an organization in the United States dedicated to research, publication, consulting, and lecturing in the general field of sustainability, with a special focus on profitable innovations for energy and resource efficiency. RMI was established in 1982 and has grown into a...
, USA). They assembled fifty examples of successful products using half the usual amount of natural resources, including hypercars, "Passivhaus
Passive house
The term passive house refers to the rigorous, voluntary, Passivhaus standard for energy efficiency in a building, reducing its ecological footprint. It results in ultra-low energy buildings that require little energy for space heating or cooling. A similar standard, MINERGIE-P, is used in...
", superwindows, long-lasting furniture and a summer holiday in the Austrian Alps. The book was accepted as a report to the Club of Rome
Club of Rome
The Club of Rome is a global think tank that deals with a variety of international political issues. Founded in 1968 at Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, Italy, the CoR describes itself as "a group of world citizens, sharing a common concern for the future of humanity." It consists of current and...
and was on the best-seller lists for several months. It has been translated into more than ten languages.
Peter Hennicke had studied and worked on using efficiency potentials in the field of energy use before he came to the Wuppertal Institute. Here, he intensified research in this area as head of the Energy Division; later on he succeeded Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker as president. Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek, the vice-president at that time, found a large audience proposing his MIPS
Material input per service unit
The concept of material input per unit of service originally developed at the Wuppertal Institute, Germany in the 1990s. The MIPS concept can be used to measure eco-efficiency of a product or service and applied in all scales from a single product to complex systems. The calculation takes into...
concept for gauging material input per service unit and identifying "ecological rucksacks" that "carry" products and services when they arrive at the consumer. He was aware of the fact that the then prevailing environmental policy was not paying enough attention to the great material flows; he advocated that besides already existing successful legal measures for pollutant emissions
Air pollution
Air pollution is the introduction of chemicals, particulate matter, or biological materials that cause harm or discomfort to humans or other living organisms, or cause damage to the natural environment or built environment, into the atmosphere....
limitation it would be necessary to reduce the material flows in order to conserve the finite material, energy and nature resources. With his concept of the “Ecological rucksack” he introduced his ideas into the scientific and political debates.
In 2001, the Tokyo-based Takeda Foundation awarded Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker and Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek a price worth one hundred million yen for their concepts "Factor Four", "MIPS" and "ecological rucksack", an expression of the Institute's international recognition.
Following the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the implementation of Agenda 21
Agenda 21
Agenda 21 is an action plan of the United Nations related to sustainable development and was an outcome of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992...
was high on the (environmental) policy agenda in many nations. The first attempts were very timid and showed the lack of experience in implementing the new leading principle called sustainable development. The 1995 report Zukunftsfähiges Deutschland (published as “Greening the North”), commissioned by BUND and Misereor, was to remedy this: the Wuppertal Institute team, headed by Reinhard Loske and Raimund Bleischwitz, pioneered a new methodology. Beginning with an estimate of the Earth's carrying capacity, the "environmental space", this study developed leading principles to help us Germans avoid overusing the environmental space to which we are "entitled". The principles are based on concepts such as efficiency and sufficiency
Self-sufficiency
Self-sufficiency refers to the state of not requiring any outside aid, support, or interaction, for survival; it is therefore a type of personal or collective autonomy...
.
Prof. Dr. Wolfang Sachs, one of the best-known scientists of the Wuppertal Institute, member of the Club of Rome and lead author at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a scientific intergovernmental body which provides comprehensive assessments of current scientific, technical and socio-economic information worldwide about the risk of climate change caused by human activity, its potential environmental and...
(IPCC), directed the study “Sustainable Germany in a Globalised World”. It was published as a book in October 2008 by Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND
Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland
Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland is a German non-governmental organisation dedicated to preserving nature and protecting the environment. The german title would be translated to something like Union for the environment and nature conservation Germany...
), Church Development Service (Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst - EED) and "Friends of the Earth
Friends of the Earth
Friends of the Earth International is an international network of environmental organizations in 76 countries.FOEI is assisted by a small secretariat which provides support for the network and its agreed major campaigns...
" to stimulate the social discussion on a globally sustainable development.
Agreed in 1997, the Kyoto Protocol
Kyoto Protocol
The Kyoto Protocol is a protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change , aimed at fighting global warming...
took the global nature of the climate problem into account at least to some extent, even if it was ratified only many years later. The Kyoto Protocol was the first international agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions
Greenhouse gas
A greenhouse gas is a gas in an atmosphere that absorbs and emits radiation within the thermal infrared range. This process is the fundamental cause of the greenhouse effect. The primary greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone...
. The Wuppertal Institute's Climate Policy Division was closely involved in setting this milestone in the international climate debate.
At the Earth Summit 2002
Earth Summit 2002
The World Summit on Sustainable Development, WSSD or Earth Summit 2002 took place in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 26 August to 4 September 2002. It was convened to discuss sustainable development by the United Nations. WSSD gathered a number of leaders from business and non-governmental...
in Johannesburg, ten years after the Rio Conference, the international agreements on sustainable development were updated with new timetables and priorities for action. The World Summit also formulated an integrated concept of science and policy in its Plan of Implementation. This plan was implemented both methodologically and in terms of its content in the Wuppertal Institute's research programme in 2003, whose conceptual research agenda was restructured under the keyword “Sustainability Research”.
In August 2005, the United Nations Environment Programme
United Nations Environment Programme
The United Nations Environment Programme coordinates United Nations environmental activities, assisting developing countries in implementing environmentally sound policies and practices. It was founded as a result of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in June 1972 and has its...
(UNEP) and the Wuppertal Institute jointly founded the Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production
Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production
Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production is an international visibility for scientific research, public awareness and transfer activities on sustainable consumption and production, located in Germany, Europe....
(CSCP). As a member of the globally cooperating UNEP Centres, its mission is to develop practically oriented contributions to the ten-year Sustainable Consumption and Production programme that was agreed upon at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002.
Research
Conceiving strategies for sustainable development requires an integrated approach both to policy and to scientific research. Our quest to live and work in a way that conserves resources often raises questions that cannot be answered by one area of policy alone or by a single scientific discipline. This is the Wuppertal Institute’s starting point. Our interdisciplinaryInterdisciplinarity
Interdisciplinarity involves the combining of two or more academic fields into one single discipline. An interdisciplinary field crosses traditional boundaries between academic disciplines or schools of thought, as new needs and professions have emerged....
research teams bring together the expertise of scientists and economists as well as geographers and spatial planners, engineers, philosophers and historians.
The focus of the four Research Groups is:
Future Energy and Mobility Structures
Research Group 1 examines questions of technology and infrastructure, taking a systems analysis approach. In the fields of energy and mobility it explores what technical and social innovations will facilitate the transition to sustainable structures, what implications this process has and what chances it offers. Alongside dynamic potential analyses it seeks to evaluate technology with a view to finding coherent paths of development.
Energy, Transport and Climate Policy
Research Group 2 focuses on strategies and instruments for effective and integrated energy, transport and climate policies at the local, regional, national and international level. A central theme is the synergy
Synergy
Synergy may be defined as two or more things functioning together to produce a result not independently obtainable.The term synergy comes from the Greek word from , , meaning "working together".-Definitions and usages:...
effects of policy strategies that support the sustainable development of energy and transport systems as well as climate protection
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
generally. Policy instruments in the field of energy end-use efficiency are a further focus.
Material Flows and Resource Management
Research Group 3 investigates material flows from extraction of raw materials through to final disposal, taking account of the global "ecological rucksack" model as well as the land use involved. It develops concepts, strategies and instruments to improve resource productivity
Resource productivity
Resource productivity is the quantity of good or service that is obtained through the expenditure of unit resource. This can be expressed in monetary terms as the monetary yield per unit resource....
and sustainable resource management from the regional and sectoral levels to the international level.
Sustainable Production and Consumption
Research Group 4 develops instruments, concepts and strategies to promote the transition to more sustainable patterns of production and consumption. The research centres on the development and market launch of products considered sustainable in terms of their entire life cycle
Product life cycle management
Product life-cycle management is the succession of strategies used by business management as a product goes through its life-cycle. The conditions in which a product is sold changes over time and must be managed as it moves through its succession of stages.Product life-cycle Like human beings,...
as well as production processes optimised right the way along the added value chain
Value chain
The value chain, is a concept from business management that was first described and popularized by Michael Porter in his 1985 best-seller, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance.-Firm Level:...
.
Cross-Cutting Subjects
Focus projects bring together core issues addressed by the research groups. In Cross-Cutting Subjects scientists from different Research Groups join forces.
Berlin Office
As a branch of the Wuppertal Institute, the Berlin Office strengthens the research-based consulting that we provide for the world of policy. It also enhances our capacity to canvass for custom in the German capital, especially against the background of the European Union's eastern enlargement. In addition, the Berlin Office promotes cooperation between the Wuppertal Institute and other academic and research institutions in Berlin. This local presence enables us to work on projects in close coordination and cooperation with principals in the German capital.
Communicating Sustainability
The Institute has always sought to communicate research results to its different target groups, addressing them in their own ‘language’. The research is communicated actively:- to the scientific world, by means of numerous scientific publications, by organising and participating in lectures, symposia, workshops and conferences and by engaging in networksSocial networkA social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...
with research partners in Germany and abroad; - to decision makers in the realms of policy, business and society, through scientific research and consulting projects, projects that launch innovations (model projects, pilot projects), dialogues with partners from business and industry, and also through publications oriented towards the users' needs;
- to the general public, by means of popular sciencePopular sciencePopular science, sometimes called literature of science, is interpretation of science intended for a general audience. While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is broad-ranging, often written by scientists as well as journalists, and is presented in many...
books, public events as well as articles and reports in the press, on radio and television; - to young people, through projects carried out with schools and other educational institutions, through supporting young scientists in collaboration with universities, and through teaching and educational materials.