The Leibniz Research Network “Environ­mental Crises – Crisis Environ­ments” is dedicated to the research of the perception and gover­nance of environ­mental changes as crisis. A key to detect a crisis and to initiate political crisis manage­ment is the per­ception of a threat as urgent, existential, and uncertain in its conse­quences.

Taking this as a vantage point, the Leibniz Research Network examines under which conditions environ­mental change is perceived and contested as crisis, and which gover­nance arrange­ments foster effective and sustai­nable crisis manage­ment.

Both steps are important as the attribution of environ­mental changes as crises involves bio­physical and societal pheno­mena whose inter­action are not well under­stood so far. Further­more, these two pers­pectives on environ­mental crises include furthe­ring the resilience of contem­porary societies with regard to environ­mental changes as well as an under­standing of crisis scenarios as an oppor­tunity for transfor­mation towards sustaina­bility .