RIFS Blog

The EU’s air quality standards fall short of WHO recommendations, so too do their plans for updating them. More substantial action is needed to provide clean air for the people of Europe. That includes large-scale policies to reduce emissions and shift mobility habits.

Report on a recent conference organised and hosted by RIFS, Kulturlabor Klanglandschaften and the University of Potsdam.

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.