Press Release of 03 January 2009

The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in January 2009 appointed DIE-Director Dirk Messner to its Scientific Advisory Board.

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.

The intensified cooperation of the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) and PIK – both institutes already working in global networks on questions of global environmental changes – offers the opportunity to interlock the issues of climate change and development policy research on the one hand and global change and global governance issues on the other hand. Against the background that development research is doomed to fail without an active climate protection policy, the cooperation of DIE and PIK is all the more important. In the words of Prof. Messner: “The German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research are natural partners and we are looking forward to an intensive exchange of knowledge with our colleagues in Potsdam.”