German Advisory Council on Climate Change (WBGU)

The work for the WBGU in 2014 focused on three main areas:

• Dissemination of the previously completed flagship report on oceans continued;
• Work on a new flagship report on urbanization;
• Preparation of two high-level policy documents as input to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) process and the forthcoming climate negotiations in Paris 2015 (see Policy relevance). Nebojsa Nakicenovic is assisted in his WBGU work by Sebastian Busch.

The WBGU oceans flagship report highlights in particular the key aspect of international governance for any potential application of new technologies aiming to harness and sustainably manage oceanic resources.

The new WBGU work on urbanization is being informed by previous TNT research on urban energy systems performed under the Global Energy Assessment (GEA). WBGU aims to better assess the complexities of the urban metabolism beyond energy and climate aspects and to assess options for redirecting urban resource streams toward a higher degree of circularity.

Regarding the SDGs Nebojsa Nakicenovic and WBGU colleague Dirk Messner presented an important WBGU policy paper comprising a proposed climate agreement architecture to the Climate Change Summit of the UN Secretary General in New York.

Last edited: 28 April 2015