Just under four weeks before COP29, the EU has set out its position for the climate conference in Baku – but it lacks a concrete figure for climate financing. Lukas Knigge explains why this may be the wrong strategy. In contrast, more concrete progress was made at last week’s COP preparatory conference on carbon markets and Article 6 of the Paris Climate Agreement. We summarize the innovations presented by a panel of experts for you.
Our “Ideas for the Climate” series today analyzes what mushrooms can contribute to climate action. Research and the first start-ups see mushrooms as a suitable alternative in the construction sector, for meat or leather. We have compiled a wide range of possible applications and the potential of mushrooms as a CO2 sink.
In today’s Opinion, IPCC author Hans-Otto Pörtner calls for climate and biodiversity action to be given constitutional status just in time for the Biodiversity Conference in Cali (COP16). Time is running out in the fight against these two crises, argues Pörtner. He believes that politicians, as well as the media, have a duty to act faster and communicate crises better.
We wish you a successful day!
Europe has one main objective in Baku. At the UN Climate Conference in November (COP29), the circle of donor countries for international climate financing is to be expanded. This was decided by the ministers responsible for climate policy on Monday at the Environment Council in Luxembourg.
Until now, the industrialized countries classified as such in the early 1990s have been paying for climate protection and adaptation measures in the Global South. According to the EU, this classification needs to be revised after three decades. Countries that have since achieved significant wealth and contribute to global warming with high greenhouse gas emissions should also be asked to pay – among them China and the oil- and gas-producing Gulf states.
At the Environment Council, the EU states set out their official negotiation position for COP29. Among other things, it states:
However, the EU countries do not want to name a specific figure for the European contribution to the NCQG (New Collective Quantified Goal) for tactical reasons. They fear that their goal of expanding the circle of donor countries could fail if they commit to a specific sum now. Sven Harmeling, Head of Climate at Climate Action Network Europe (CAN Europe), does not consider this strategy effective. “It is building an additional front”, he says.
In an interview with Table.Briefings, Harmeling criticizes that the EU lacks a clear strategy on how to win others as donor countries or get them to disclose their contributions to climate financing. At the same time, the EU must also clearly state that it bears the main responsibility for climate financing.
The NCQG is the successor to the currently valid $100 billion goal, under which industrialized countries pay developing countries. “As long as the industrialized countries do not make it clear that they will go higher than the $100 billion this time, they should not set any conditions themselves”, Harmeling argues. He believes that their unwillingness to continue the $100 billion – and potentially contributing even less – neither reflects the global economy nor does it honor the historical responsibility of industrialized nations. Even the US has designated the $100 billion per year as a minimum for the NCQG. “Europe should signal more openness there”, demands Harmeling.
The reasons for Europe’s lack of openness are the challenging budgetary situations in major EU member states and the political debates over finances in their capitals. France is plagued by a massive budget deficit; in Berlin, budget disputes threaten to repeatedly fracture the governing coalition, and climate financing is declining. In Italy, priorities other than combating climate change and its financing prevail. Consequently, the EU heads to Baku weakened, especially on financial matters.
The worst-case scenario is avoided, as Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra remains in office and brings considerable experience to the climate negotiations and as a financial expert. However, the Hungarian Council Presidency is not considered particularly ambitious and is likely to limit itself to its moderating role within the EU in Baku. This places even more focus on the financially strained major member states during negotiations with other countries in Baku.
“In the best-case scenario, the EU will have a strategy by the time of the COP on how far it can go in climate financing, both through public funding and development banks”, says Harmeling. Should the EU abandon its hard line on expanding the circle of donor countries, other nations might agree to disclose their climate financing and initiate a longer-term process to broaden the donor base, he believes.
Although no such strategy is hinted at in the official conclusions of the EU member states, Climate Commissioner Hoekstra said on Monday evening that they want to ensure that more money from public and private sources is available for the neediest countries. Whether this will succeed remains to be seen. The current geopolitical situation creates a complicated negotiation scenario. Also, the positions of the COP participant countries are still, in some cases, very far apart, according to Hoekstra.
A failure of the COP in Baku, similar to Copenhagen in 2009, would harm the EU above all, says Harmeling. “The European public is still relatively highly sensitized to these issues.”
In the search for new materials that are climate-friendly and recyclable, biological systems originating from a species that has received little attention are coming to the fore: Fungi. They, or more precisely their roots, could do a lot for climate action in the future – for example as a building material, for insulation or as a meat substitute. This is suggested by studies and initial trials for large-scale applications of the new materials.
“We are currently seeing the first commercialization by start-ups“, says Dirk Hebel, for example. He is Professor of Sustainable Building at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and has been researching mushrooms as a building material for around eight years.
Hebel is enthusiastic: Panels based on mushroom mycelium could be used in the future wherever chipboard is used today. This is because they have a problem: They consist of a mixture of glue and wood, which is why they are almost impossible to recycle and are usually burnt at the end of their useful life – the CO2 stored in them escapes into the atmosphere.
Similar stable plates can be produced from the fungal mycelium and organic residues such as wood or grass: The mycelium grows through the loose materials in search of nutrients and “sticks” them together in the process. The organism then dies through heating and the resulting dehydration, leaving behind a solid structure. But unlike chipboard, the new material is “completely biologically compostable”, explains Hebel. Mushroom mycelium as an alternative to synthetic adhesives, which are not compostable, is therefore a good approach for a circular economy, as the German government wants to enshrine in the National Circular Economy Strategy.
Wolfgang Hinterdobler, co-founder of the Austrian company MyPilz, uses fungi in a completely different way in the fight against climate change. To this end, MyPilz has developed a service to make soil fungi available as beneficial organisms for agriculture – where they are supposed to combat plant pests and at the same time promote the build-up of humus in the soil. This binds CO2 in the soil because soil fungi quickly metabolize plant residues, form symbioses with the plant roots and thus build up and stabilize biomass in the soil. Ideally, farmers then need less fertilizer and pesticides. MyPilz isolates a local fungus from a local soil sample for this application. Farmers receive this in the form of fungal spores. The basic package for this service costs €1,345.
The cultivation of mushrooms not only leads to lower emissions, mushrooms can also store large amounts of carbon. Last year, for example, a study concluded that mycorrhizal fungi store up to 13 gigatons of CO2 per year. This corresponds to around a third of CO2 emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels. A mycelium is the “fungal root” – a mycorrhiza is formed when a fungus envelops the finest roots of plants with the mycelium and thus enables an exchange between fungus and plant via the roots. Thousands of species of fungi form mycorrhiza, for example fly agarics, chanterelles, porcini mushrooms and truffles.
The main reason why fungi can store so much CO2: Unlike plants, they are not able to photosynthesize, so they have to absorb sugar from other organic material. They decompose this very efficiently at the right humidity and temperature.
The catch is that fungi do not store carbon permanently, but only temporarily. Research is currently being carried out into the conditions under which they can be used to keep CO2 in the soil as long and efficiently as possible.
Wolfgang Hinterdobler also sees great climate potential for mushrooms in the diet. Mushroom protein can be used as a substitute product for emission-intensive meat. The start-up Hermann.Bio, for example, produces the Fungi Pad, a meat alternative based on king oyster mushrooms. The company Quorn produces chicken nuggets and meatballs from mushroom protein and Revo Foods also offers fish and seafood substitutes made from mushrooms. According to studies, the production of one kilogram of mushrooms generates around two to three kilograms of CO2, while the production of one kilogram of beef emits around 100 kilograms of CO2.
And mushrooms could also be used in many other areas: Shoe manufacturer Giesswein, for example, uses mushroom-based leather substitutes. Mushrooms that do not meet the standards of the food industry are used for this. You can also buy footballs, handbags or hats made from mushroom leather from the company Mycoworks. So far, these have tended to be high-priced designer products, but a study assumes that “mushroom leather” is even cheaper to produce than animal or synthetic leather.
“I’m very positive about the future of the mushroom industry“, says MyPilz co-founder Hinterdobler. One major advantage is that the cultivation of mushrooms is easily scalable and hardly uses any land – mushrooms can be grown in industrial plants instead of on farmland.
Currently, mushroom products are still being produced by small start-ups with “a lot of passion”, says scientist Dirk Hebel. There is still no stable market and no economies of scale. “We are also still experiencing a lot of reservations about the topic”, he says. People are afraid to touch the mushroom products because they think they are still living products. There still needs to be a bit of education. But Hebel is confident: In ten to 15 years, it will be possible to buy mushroom slabs in DIY stores. “I’m actually almost certain of that”, he says.
Moreover, there is still a great deal of unexplored potential in the world of mushrooms, adds Wolfgang Hinterdobler. Less than one percent of the world’s mushroom species have been researched in detail to date. “If we have already come this far, then there is still a lot of potential for the future”, he says.
32 years of the Framework Convention on Climate Change, 36 years of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – and no end to climate change in sight, what’s going on? We have known for decades that fossil fuels are the main problem. It was only last year that this was finally acknowledged in the final declaration of COP28. But if Der SPIEGEL is right, this insight will disappear from the texts again. We are on the wrong track, because rapid climate change, as we have triggered it, is causing massive damage, costing human lives and destroying nature as we know it.
As climate change progresses, we are approaching the limits of controllability. Climate change, not climate action, will gradually take away our prosperity. Accordingly, we are defending prosperity with the wrong means if we think we need fossil fuels to do so.
We need a turnaround in climate protection worthy of the name. And we also need the same in biodiversity protection. Because these two existential crises are linked. Through heat, droughts and flooding, climate change is damaging biodiversity and the life-sustaining functions of ecosystems, including the ability to bind CO2 and naturally slow down climate change. Conversely, the release of greenhouse gases from dying forests, drying moors and thawing permafrost soils accelerates climate change and its effects on people and nature. Climate action and biodiversity conservation, also by solving the pollution crisis, have no alternative.
The climate and the earth’s ecosystems function according to natural laws that are increasingly understood by science. In the social sphere, these laws can be compared to traffic rules; anyone who violates them risks serious accidents. The increasing number of climate catastrophes shows this: You cannot negotiate with the laws of nature, you have to respect them, just as you respect red traffic lights. Natural laws are not a matter of opinion.
Nevertheless, there are many who have not actually understood the facts and the threat and see the necessary action as arbitrary. Some politicians’ phrases such as “climate policy with a sense of proportion” and “the earth will not perish tomorrow” reflect this problem. Slowing down, delaying and burying our heads in the sand are currently the dominant strategies in international climate policy and to some extent also at national level. However, decisive action is needed to make up for lost ground and limit climate change and its damage.
Let’s not fool ourselves: With inadequate climate action measures, advancing climate change will educate humanity and force change through ever worse disasters. “He who will not hear must feel” – as the saying goes. Despite this, many people are not prepared to act; those who put the brakes on decide for others, forcing climate change on them. But why are we prepared to risk our prosperity and pay six times more for disaster repairs than for effective and successful climate action? This is how our prosperity is disappearing. We already have to adapt to ongoing climate change, but we should realize that our ability to adapt will diminish as climate change increases.
This grievance and the current voter behavior show that we have an education and awareness problem. Climate change and biodiversity loss affect all areas of life. For consistent protection, we need a broad appreciation of our natural resources, and we can only achieve this through education and the media if we set the right priorities. In schools and universities, we need cross-cutting topics in all subjects and a corresponding commitment from teachers. Politicians need to take control here, and the religious communities can help.
In Germany, the preservation of democracy is an essential foundation and consensus among the democratic parties. This is currently not the case when it comes to the existential problems of climate change and species loss. Democracy, climate action and biodiversity conservation together are the foundation of a healthy society and its healthy natural resources. There is only a small window of ten to twenty years left, at the end of which protective measures must have been successful. It is high time that all parties act on this foundation in a timely and consensual manner and give these existential issues constitutional status.
What is to be done? The constitutions of the world’s nations should formulate these foundations of human and natural existence and leave no room for harmful behavior in this standardization. In this way, new economic developments can only be permitted with renewables and fossil fuels can be phased out in the medium term. Social and international balance is essential on the way there.
But there is hope: The rights of nature have now been recognized in countries as diverse as Ecuador, Bolivia, New Zealand, India and Uganda, in some cases with constitutional status. It is time for our country to position itself accordingly, to explicitly include the climate and to end the cacophony of political parties on the issues of climate and biodiversity protection.
Ecologist Hans-Otto Pörtner is Professor of Integrative Ecophysiology at the Alfred Wegener Institute and the University of Bremen. He has contributed as author and coordinating lead author to various IPCC Assessment Reports and Special Reports.
Just under four weeks before COP29, the EU has set out its position for the climate conference in Baku – but it lacks a concrete figure for climate financing. Lukas Knigge explains why this may be the wrong strategy. In contrast, more concrete progress was made at last week’s COP preparatory conference on carbon markets and Article 6 of the Paris Climate Agreement. We summarize the innovations presented by a panel of experts for you.
Our “Ideas for the Climate” series today analyzes what mushrooms can contribute to climate action. Research and the first start-ups see mushrooms as a suitable alternative in the construction sector, for meat or leather. We have compiled a wide range of possible applications and the potential of mushrooms as a CO2 sink.
In today’s Opinion, IPCC author Hans-Otto Pörtner calls for climate and biodiversity action to be given constitutional status just in time for the Biodiversity Conference in Cali (COP16). Time is running out in the fight against these two crises, argues Pörtner. He believes that politicians, as well as the media, have a duty to act faster and communicate crises better.
We wish you a successful day!
Europe has one main objective in Baku. At the UN Climate Conference in November (COP29), the circle of donor countries for international climate financing is to be expanded. This was decided by the ministers responsible for climate policy on Monday at the Environment Council in Luxembourg.
Until now, the industrialized countries classified as such in the early 1990s have been paying for climate protection and adaptation measures in the Global South. According to the EU, this classification needs to be revised after three decades. Countries that have since achieved significant wealth and contribute to global warming with high greenhouse gas emissions should also be asked to pay – among them China and the oil- and gas-producing Gulf states.
At the Environment Council, the EU states set out their official negotiation position for COP29. Among other things, it states:
However, the EU countries do not want to name a specific figure for the European contribution to the NCQG (New Collective Quantified Goal) for tactical reasons. They fear that their goal of expanding the circle of donor countries could fail if they commit to a specific sum now. Sven Harmeling, Head of Climate at Climate Action Network Europe (CAN Europe), does not consider this strategy effective. “It is building an additional front”, he says.
In an interview with Table.Briefings, Harmeling criticizes that the EU lacks a clear strategy on how to win others as donor countries or get them to disclose their contributions to climate financing. At the same time, the EU must also clearly state that it bears the main responsibility for climate financing.
The NCQG is the successor to the currently valid $100 billion goal, under which industrialized countries pay developing countries. “As long as the industrialized countries do not make it clear that they will go higher than the $100 billion this time, they should not set any conditions themselves”, Harmeling argues. He believes that their unwillingness to continue the $100 billion – and potentially contributing even less – neither reflects the global economy nor does it honor the historical responsibility of industrialized nations. Even the US has designated the $100 billion per year as a minimum for the NCQG. “Europe should signal more openness there”, demands Harmeling.
The reasons for Europe’s lack of openness are the challenging budgetary situations in major EU member states and the political debates over finances in their capitals. France is plagued by a massive budget deficit; in Berlin, budget disputes threaten to repeatedly fracture the governing coalition, and climate financing is declining. In Italy, priorities other than combating climate change and its financing prevail. Consequently, the EU heads to Baku weakened, especially on financial matters.
The worst-case scenario is avoided, as Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra remains in office and brings considerable experience to the climate negotiations and as a financial expert. However, the Hungarian Council Presidency is not considered particularly ambitious and is likely to limit itself to its moderating role within the EU in Baku. This places even more focus on the financially strained major member states during negotiations with other countries in Baku.
“In the best-case scenario, the EU will have a strategy by the time of the COP on how far it can go in climate financing, both through public funding and development banks”, says Harmeling. Should the EU abandon its hard line on expanding the circle of donor countries, other nations might agree to disclose their climate financing and initiate a longer-term process to broaden the donor base, he believes.
Although no such strategy is hinted at in the official conclusions of the EU member states, Climate Commissioner Hoekstra said on Monday evening that they want to ensure that more money from public and private sources is available for the neediest countries. Whether this will succeed remains to be seen. The current geopolitical situation creates a complicated negotiation scenario. Also, the positions of the COP participant countries are still, in some cases, very far apart, according to Hoekstra.
A failure of the COP in Baku, similar to Copenhagen in 2009, would harm the EU above all, says Harmeling. “The European public is still relatively highly sensitized to these issues.”
In the search for new materials that are climate-friendly and recyclable, biological systems originating from a species that has received little attention are coming to the fore: Fungi. They, or more precisely their roots, could do a lot for climate action in the future – for example as a building material, for insulation or as a meat substitute. This is suggested by studies and initial trials for large-scale applications of the new materials.
“We are currently seeing the first commercialization by start-ups“, says Dirk Hebel, for example. He is Professor of Sustainable Building at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and has been researching mushrooms as a building material for around eight years.
Hebel is enthusiastic: Panels based on mushroom mycelium could be used in the future wherever chipboard is used today. This is because they have a problem: They consist of a mixture of glue and wood, which is why they are almost impossible to recycle and are usually burnt at the end of their useful life – the CO2 stored in them escapes into the atmosphere.
Similar stable plates can be produced from the fungal mycelium and organic residues such as wood or grass: The mycelium grows through the loose materials in search of nutrients and “sticks” them together in the process. The organism then dies through heating and the resulting dehydration, leaving behind a solid structure. But unlike chipboard, the new material is “completely biologically compostable”, explains Hebel. Mushroom mycelium as an alternative to synthetic adhesives, which are not compostable, is therefore a good approach for a circular economy, as the German government wants to enshrine in the National Circular Economy Strategy.
Wolfgang Hinterdobler, co-founder of the Austrian company MyPilz, uses fungi in a completely different way in the fight against climate change. To this end, MyPilz has developed a service to make soil fungi available as beneficial organisms for agriculture – where they are supposed to combat plant pests and at the same time promote the build-up of humus in the soil. This binds CO2 in the soil because soil fungi quickly metabolize plant residues, form symbioses with the plant roots and thus build up and stabilize biomass in the soil. Ideally, farmers then need less fertilizer and pesticides. MyPilz isolates a local fungus from a local soil sample for this application. Farmers receive this in the form of fungal spores. The basic package for this service costs €1,345.
The cultivation of mushrooms not only leads to lower emissions, mushrooms can also store large amounts of carbon. Last year, for example, a study concluded that mycorrhizal fungi store up to 13 gigatons of CO2 per year. This corresponds to around a third of CO2 emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels. A mycelium is the “fungal root” – a mycorrhiza is formed when a fungus envelops the finest roots of plants with the mycelium and thus enables an exchange between fungus and plant via the roots. Thousands of species of fungi form mycorrhiza, for example fly agarics, chanterelles, porcini mushrooms and truffles.
The main reason why fungi can store so much CO2: Unlike plants, they are not able to photosynthesize, so they have to absorb sugar from other organic material. They decompose this very efficiently at the right humidity and temperature.
The catch is that fungi do not store carbon permanently, but only temporarily. Research is currently being carried out into the conditions under which they can be used to keep CO2 in the soil as long and efficiently as possible.
Wolfgang Hinterdobler also sees great climate potential for mushrooms in the diet. Mushroom protein can be used as a substitute product for emission-intensive meat. The start-up Hermann.Bio, for example, produces the Fungi Pad, a meat alternative based on king oyster mushrooms. The company Quorn produces chicken nuggets and meatballs from mushroom protein and Revo Foods also offers fish and seafood substitutes made from mushrooms. According to studies, the production of one kilogram of mushrooms generates around two to three kilograms of CO2, while the production of one kilogram of beef emits around 100 kilograms of CO2.
And mushrooms could also be used in many other areas: Shoe manufacturer Giesswein, for example, uses mushroom-based leather substitutes. Mushrooms that do not meet the standards of the food industry are used for this. You can also buy footballs, handbags or hats made from mushroom leather from the company Mycoworks. So far, these have tended to be high-priced designer products, but a study assumes that “mushroom leather” is even cheaper to produce than animal or synthetic leather.
“I’m very positive about the future of the mushroom industry“, says MyPilz co-founder Hinterdobler. One major advantage is that the cultivation of mushrooms is easily scalable and hardly uses any land – mushrooms can be grown in industrial plants instead of on farmland.
Currently, mushroom products are still being produced by small start-ups with “a lot of passion”, says scientist Dirk Hebel. There is still no stable market and no economies of scale. “We are also still experiencing a lot of reservations about the topic”, he says. People are afraid to touch the mushroom products because they think they are still living products. There still needs to be a bit of education. But Hebel is confident: In ten to 15 years, it will be possible to buy mushroom slabs in DIY stores. “I’m actually almost certain of that”, he says.
Moreover, there is still a great deal of unexplored potential in the world of mushrooms, adds Wolfgang Hinterdobler. Less than one percent of the world’s mushroom species have been researched in detail to date. “If we have already come this far, then there is still a lot of potential for the future”, he says.
32 years of the Framework Convention on Climate Change, 36 years of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – and no end to climate change in sight, what’s going on? We have known for decades that fossil fuels are the main problem. It was only last year that this was finally acknowledged in the final declaration of COP28. But if Der SPIEGEL is right, this insight will disappear from the texts again. We are on the wrong track, because rapid climate change, as we have triggered it, is causing massive damage, costing human lives and destroying nature as we know it.
As climate change progresses, we are approaching the limits of controllability. Climate change, not climate action, will gradually take away our prosperity. Accordingly, we are defending prosperity with the wrong means if we think we need fossil fuels to do so.
We need a turnaround in climate protection worthy of the name. And we also need the same in biodiversity protection. Because these two existential crises are linked. Through heat, droughts and flooding, climate change is damaging biodiversity and the life-sustaining functions of ecosystems, including the ability to bind CO2 and naturally slow down climate change. Conversely, the release of greenhouse gases from dying forests, drying moors and thawing permafrost soils accelerates climate change and its effects on people and nature. Climate action and biodiversity conservation, also by solving the pollution crisis, have no alternative.
The climate and the earth’s ecosystems function according to natural laws that are increasingly understood by science. In the social sphere, these laws can be compared to traffic rules; anyone who violates them risks serious accidents. The increasing number of climate catastrophes shows this: You cannot negotiate with the laws of nature, you have to respect them, just as you respect red traffic lights. Natural laws are not a matter of opinion.
Nevertheless, there are many who have not actually understood the facts and the threat and see the necessary action as arbitrary. Some politicians’ phrases such as “climate policy with a sense of proportion” and “the earth will not perish tomorrow” reflect this problem. Slowing down, delaying and burying our heads in the sand are currently the dominant strategies in international climate policy and to some extent also at national level. However, decisive action is needed to make up for lost ground and limit climate change and its damage.
Let’s not fool ourselves: With inadequate climate action measures, advancing climate change will educate humanity and force change through ever worse disasters. “He who will not hear must feel” – as the saying goes. Despite this, many people are not prepared to act; those who put the brakes on decide for others, forcing climate change on them. But why are we prepared to risk our prosperity and pay six times more for disaster repairs than for effective and successful climate action? This is how our prosperity is disappearing. We already have to adapt to ongoing climate change, but we should realize that our ability to adapt will diminish as climate change increases.
This grievance and the current voter behavior show that we have an education and awareness problem. Climate change and biodiversity loss affect all areas of life. For consistent protection, we need a broad appreciation of our natural resources, and we can only achieve this through education and the media if we set the right priorities. In schools and universities, we need cross-cutting topics in all subjects and a corresponding commitment from teachers. Politicians need to take control here, and the religious communities can help.
In Germany, the preservation of democracy is an essential foundation and consensus among the democratic parties. This is currently not the case when it comes to the existential problems of climate change and species loss. Democracy, climate action and biodiversity conservation together are the foundation of a healthy society and its healthy natural resources. There is only a small window of ten to twenty years left, at the end of which protective measures must have been successful. It is high time that all parties act on this foundation in a timely and consensual manner and give these existential issues constitutional status.
What is to be done? The constitutions of the world’s nations should formulate these foundations of human and natural existence and leave no room for harmful behavior in this standardization. In this way, new economic developments can only be permitted with renewables and fossil fuels can be phased out in the medium term. Social and international balance is essential on the way there.
But there is hope: The rights of nature have now been recognized in countries as diverse as Ecuador, Bolivia, New Zealand, India and Uganda, in some cases with constitutional status. It is time for our country to position itself accordingly, to explicitly include the climate and to end the cacophony of political parties on the issues of climate and biodiversity protection.
Ecologist Hans-Otto Pörtner is Professor of Integrative Ecophysiology at the Alfred Wegener Institute and the University of Bremen. He has contributed as author and coordinating lead author to various IPCC Assessment Reports and Special Reports.
