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 sustainability transformations.