Agents and victims, winners and losers, rarely have the same origin. Neither do the challenges facing environmental and sustainability research limited by national borders, nor can they be dealt with effectively on the national level alone. At the DLR Project Management Agency, we are committed to ensuring that Germany uses its research and innovative potency to play an important role in resolving these challenges and to fulfil its role as a provider of ideas for a sustainable future.
© Gabin Ananou
The international negotiation processes within the environmental conventions of the United Nations in respect to climate (UNFCCC), biodiversity (UNCBD) and desertification (UNCCD) are important reference points in our work. We provide advice during international deliberations on research policies, for instance within the framework of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or the Intergovernmental Panel on Biological Diversity (IPBES). Indeed, the German IPCC coordination agency and the German IPBES coordination agency are located here at the DLR Project Management Agency.
Increasingly in Europe, it is important to strengthen research cooperation and coordination between countries to find common answers to the major challenges posed by global transformation. At the DLR Project Management Agency, we support the central initiatives within research policies such as the joint programme planning initiative ‘JPI Climate’ on interdisciplinary coordination and integration of climate research in Europe, as well as the ERANET ‘biodivERsA’ to coordinate biodiversity research in Europe. For this purpose, we are in constant contact with other research funders and programme managers in Europe and with the European Commission.
Moreover, we manage numerous bi- or multilateral research cooperations and initiatives seeking to build their own excellent research capabilities in other regions of the world. They include, in particular, two excellent centres for climate change and adaptive land management in western and southern Africa (Regional Science Service Centres WASCAL / SASSCAL), which are currently being established with 15 African partner countries to strengthen research, consulting, and capability development. We also look after bilateral cooperation projects such as the German-Brazilian collaboration within the ‘Atmospheric Tall Tower Observatory’ (ATTO). This is a measurement station with the same height as the Eiffel Tower, set up in the Brazilian rainforest of the Amazonas region, to measure the specific climactic impact there, the largest area of continuous woodland in the tropics. In addition, we support a number of internationally structured associative projects that develop and test instruments and strategies for sustainable urban development, sustainable land use, and innovative environment technologies ( the ‘Future Megacities’, ‘Rapid Planning’, and ‘Sustainable Land Management’ funded measures).