Press Release of 22 February 2010

Today, the Scientific Advisory Board of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) has elected Dirk Messner, Director of the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), to its Chair. The international membership of the Advisory Board include such renowned researchers as Prof. Lord Nicolas Stern, Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Prof. Johan Rockström, Executive Director of the Stockholm Environment Institute as well as Prof. Georg Teutsch, Chairman of the Leipzig based Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung.

Last year’s appointment of Messner to PIK’s Scientific Advisory Board was a clear message: the issues of climate change and development policy research on the one hand and global change and global governance issues on the other hand need to be interlocked. The climate negotiations in Copenhagen made it very clear; there will be no effective climate protection policies without the involvement of the developing countries.

At the Potsdam’s Telegraphenberg campus – Albert Einstein’s old place of activity – PIK addresses crucial scientific questions in the fields of global change, climate impacts and sustainable development. Researchers from the natural and social sciences work together to generate interdisciplinary insights and to provide society with sound information for decision making. PIK is one of the leading Institute’s examining the Earth system's capacity for withstanding human interventions and devise strategies for a sustainable development of humankind and nature.