Around the world, human beings are consuming the Earth’s natural resources, competing for land, raw materials and drinking water. Increasingly, they are settling in major urban centres. At the same time, the climate is changing, and many animal and plant species are threatened by extinction. How can we protect our environment, while still preserving our prosperity and quality-of-life? Politicians, industry, and above all scientists are asking themselves precisely this question. Scientists are searching for answers and new ways of restoring harmony to economy and ecology to ensure that we embark upon a sustainable future.
© therry/Thinkstock
The German government funds research and development projects that focus on climate protection and conservation, safeguarding biodiversity, ensuring sustainable urban and land management, and promote sustainable social transformation. In this respect, scientists research scenarios and offer insights to ensure that our future will unfold within sustainable structures.
At the DLR Projektträger, we support our clients in many different ways. We are familiar with key stakeholders, institutions, and infrastructures in the area of environment and sustainability. We are up-to-date with the latest advances in research and development and are fully equipped to assess their value. We assist in the definition and implementation of new funding priorities and in important coordination processes on a national, European, and international level. Here, we take care to ensure an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach across borders, be they between topical fields, research programmes, funding organisations, or even countries and regions. We focus on the concrete benefits of research and project results with respect to their contribution to sustainable development.
The challenges inherent to global transformation cannot be solved on a national level. This is why we are committed to investing our expertise within the framework of European and international initiatives and programmes.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) are particularly important to us in this respect. International scientific organisations – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) – provide the scientific basis for these two conventions. The German coordination agencies for the IPCC and the IPBES are located within the DLR Projektträger.