RIFS Blog

For over twenty years, my research has followed rivers, mountains and sacred sites across Guatemala, Ecuador, Colombia and Nepal, asking what changes when we treat these places not as a backdrop to human affairs, but as living participants. Together with Indigenous and non-Indigenous filmmakers, I recently co-created two documentaries under the European Research Council project RIVERS – Human Rights Beyond the Human?, asking how legal and ethical questions shift once land becomes an agent, not a natural resource. As the 2026 Klaus Töpfer Sustainability Fellow at RIFS, I am now turning that experience into practical ethical guidance for how researchers and artists can collaborate more responsibly. It starts with a very concrete question: How do you ask living land itself for permission?

In June 2026, the Saami Council, in cooperation with the RIFS research group “reIMAGINE Arctic Research”, organized and facilitated a sharing event/exhibition in the municipality of Unjárga/Nesseby in Sápmi (Norway). The event was part of the EU-Horizon BIRGEJUPMI project and the culmination of Work Package 4 “Local and global futures: young people’s visions of sustainable livelihoods and inclusive environmental decision-making”, which set out to investigate young people’s visions of their future in the face of climate change and its consequences in coastal municipalities in Sápmi.

This question was central to a workshop presented by the RIFS digitalisation team at the 13th International Conference on Information and Communications Technology for Sustainability (ICT4S 2026) in Bern. Together with participants, we explored whether these systems subtly shape how we think about environmental and social responsibility. Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok function not only as technical tools but also as silent interpreters, potentially shaping our understanding of environmental and social responsibility, conflicts, and future challenges.

Loss and Damage (L&D) from climate change is a complex, multi-perspective issue spanning norms, values, material and financial assets, individual lives, cultures, political and business interests as well as governance processes with a multitude of actors and sectors involved. Amid this complexity, effective solutions to L&D challenges can only be developed through interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches.

The EU’s green and digital transitions depend heavily on critical raw materials, most of which are currently imported. To reduce supply-chain vulnerabilities and strengthen strategic autonomy, the EU adopted the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) in 2024, which promotes domestic extraction, processing, and recycling and aims to meet at least 10% of demand for strategic raw materials from European sources by 2030. This shift has renewed debate over the role of domestic mining in a just green transition, raising questions about several commonly held assumptions.

Transformation research extends beyond examining technological and economic changes to include questions of justice essential for forging a sustainable future. Our institute’s research on structural change in the Lusatia and Rhine regions has shown that gender differences are too often overlooked, a topic that we explored in depth in a recent contribution to the journal "Forum Wissenschaft".

Germany is not an Arctic state. Nonetheless, German policymakers, scientists and NGOs all engage with the region. The Arctic is not only of geopolitical interest, but home to Indigenous peoples and their cultures. They live within highly sensitive ecosystems threatened by changes such as sea ice decline and a warming climate.
The Arctic Dialogue is a series of semi-annual meetings organized by the German Arctic Office at the Alfred-Wegener-Institute (AWI) and aimed at cultivating an open dialogue on Arctic matters between science and policymakers, including representatives of German Federal Ministries, research institutes, and NGOs engaged in Arctic research. This year, RIFS was invited to host the Arctic Dialogue and set the theme in cooperation with the Arctic Office. The Saami Council partnered with RIFS and was decisive in organizing the thematic sessions.

Whether it’s electric cars, heat pumps, gender issues or migration: a deep rift runs through our society. At least, that is what 81 per cent of Germans believe. Or is this narrative simply being drummed into us? Polarisation, so the argument goes, threatens democracy and social cohesion. Increasingly, researchers are examining just how polarised German society is and how we can depolarise it through strategies such as public dialogue, media campaigns, and institutional reforms. But how helpful is it to view our society through the lens of polarisation? Is democracy really primarily threatened by an allegedly polarised society? Or is this idea a distraction from other important factors, such as a broader shift to the right or the erosion of the welfare state?

It is widely recognised at both the national and state level that financial participation is a crucial lever for advancing the energy transition in communities. The Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) already includes the possibility of financial participation under Section 6 – albeit on voluntary basis. However, stakeholders from politics, business and civil society have frequently emphasised – in discussions and at events – that voluntarism isn’t enough. Rather, we need binding regulations for the financial participation of municipalities and local communities.

New Discussion Paper „Facilitation as composting the self“

In an era of contested multilateralism, calls for smaller, club-like alliances of countries have gained increasing traction. “Climate clubs” promise to overcome the inertia that has stalled progress in global climate policy. In a recently published article in Energy Research & Social Science, RIFS researcher Charlotte Unger argues that there is a persistent gap between the idealized potential of climate clubs and their actual performance.

A country without a military, a global leader in gender equality, and rivers so clean that you can drink straight from them – does this sound like something from a dream? In Iceland, it’s simply reality.
Following an invitation to contribute to the Nordic Lighthouse, a metaphor chosen by the Spirit of Humanity Forum (SoH Forum), I took part in an experimental gathering in Reykjavík aimed at helping leaders and activists to reconnect with their inner compass in order to navigate the complexity of transformation work.