Headline: RIFS Blog

This year, Earth Overshoot Day is on 1 August. On this day, we humans in the world have used up the resources of our planet that would renew themselves within a year.

From 2-4 July, the Working Group of the Parties to the Aarhus Convention met for the 28th time in the UN Headquarters in Geneva. The agenda featured critical topics such as access to justice, public participation in international forums, the protection of environmental defenders, compliance cases, capacity-building, and possible topics of future work. However, one cross-cutting issue loomed over the discussions: the significant shortfall in financial contributions to support the growing workload of the Secretariat and Compliance Committee.

The much-coveted title of “European Capital of Culture” isn’t always good news for residents. Surprisingly, winning the title is often associated with a decline in the wellbeing and satisfaction of citizens with city life. Following its successful bid for Capital of Culture status in 2025, Chemnitz is pursuing an approach that focuses on public participation and aims to improve social cohesion and quality of life in addition to boosting the city’s reputation. Students from a joint seminar held at RIFS and Chemnitz University of Technology have analysed the social sustainability of a number of Capital of Culture projects.

Marginalised populations are asymmetrically affected at all stages of the plastics production cycle – especially the extraction of raw materials. Such environmental impacts reproduce and reinforce pre-existing racial and socioeconomic inequalities. This is clearly illustrated in Maceió, the capital of Brazil’s north-eastern state of Alagoas: Since 2019, around 60,000 people have been forced to leave their communities after earth tremors and ground subsidence started to endanger the structures of houses and other buildings surrounding Mundaú Lagoon. Entire neighbourhoods have subsequently been abandoned.

Facilitating Spaces that Center Indigenous Perspectives and Participation in International Arctic Conferences

In the geopolitics of the global energy transformation, Kazakhstan’s enormous wind and solar potential – coupled with land availability and rich reserves of critical raw materials – represent a strong strategic advantage. Renewables can supply low-cost power to the growing population, bolster energy security and reduce power imports, help decarbonise industry and transport, and attract foreign investment. For a fossil-dependent economy like Kazakhstan, harnessing these benefits is essential for adapting to the decarbonising global economy and contributing to global climate action.

At a recent UNFCCC-hosted technical meeting held in Bonn in preparation for the next UN Climate Conference, just two hours were reserved for negotiations on Article 12 of the Paris Agreement - Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE). RIFS researcher Deborah Lika asks: Are we really betting on climate action, or just shuffling the deck without ever dealing a hand?

Just a few years ago, deep seabed mining was barely on the public’s radar. But growing pressure from a small section of industry and investors to permit commercial mining has seen the topic gain prominence in mainstream media. As intermediaries between present and future generations, youth and young people should be afforded the opportunity to contribute to the debate.

A joint study by Das Progressive Zentrum and RIFS.

In March 2024, leading politicians and industry experts gathered in Geneva to tackle one of the most pressing challenges of our time: methane emissions. The participants discussed available methods to reduce methane emissions as called for under the Global Methane Pledge, which aims to cut global methane emissions by at least 30 percent by 2030 compared to 2020 levels. In this blog post, we take a closer look at why methane emissions matter and how they could be reduced.

In a world connected by global supply chains, states are hesitant to pursue ambitious industrial decarbonization policies, fearing that strict regulations or high carbon prices could make industries less competitive or that consumers might switch to cheaper products from countries with lax regulation. But there is a solution: Policies that do not just target the emissions that occur within the confines of national or EU borders but that also cover emissions that have accumulated throughout supply chains. Carbon footprint policies target the upstream supply chain emissions that occur throughout the various stages of production.

In a new publication, we examine how citizens contribute to contemporary policy advice through citizens' assemblies – a form of public participation that has become increasingly popular in Germany and Poland in recent years.

The new handbook "Organizing municipal citizens' councils" was recently published. RIFS is co-editor of the work, together with Mehr Demokratie e.V. and the Institute for Democracy and Participation Research (IDPF) in Wuppertal. The handbook is aimed at practitioners in the field of public participation and offers valuable insights and advice on the initiation, planning and successful implementation of citizens' assemblies at the municipal level.

Imagine three groups of people deliberating the same question. All three groups were recruited the same way, they are deliberating in similar rooms, and they have the same materials available. Does it actually matter how the facilitation of these deliberative processes is carried out? Dirk von Schneidemesser, Dorota Stasiak and Daniel Oppold explain why it matters, and how different facilitation styles affect deliberation.

This year the German government outlined its proposals for an amendment of the Federal Climate Protection Act, setting targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 65 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2030 and to achieve greenhouse gas neutrality by 2045. Many of the measures necessary to achieve these goals – especially when it comes to infrastructure – must be implemented at the municipal level. Bringing about change in towns and communities presents significant challenges and projects frequently meet with opposition.

The availability of renewable energy is an important factor for future investment decisions in the chemical and steel industry. This is a key finding of our survey of 300 decision-makers from the chemical and steel industry. 92 per cent of the respondents anticipate that their company will relocate facilities as it seeks to decarbonize production. In addition to low-cost renewable energies, the respondents identify political support as a key factor in investment location decisions.