MCC opening: „A new kind of dialogue at the science-policy interface“

11/16/2012 - The newly founded Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) gets operational. With already 13 scientists up and working, and 17 more to be employed within the next months, plus support staff, MCC aims at becoming a new factor in the sustainability science scene. "This institute is venturing to provide scientific assessments that actually help policy-makers in taking knowledge-based decision in the field of climate and economics - and we will do so by trying to establish some new kind of dialogue at the science-policy interface," director Ottmar Edenhofer said in front of 200 guests from science, politics, and business, at the opening event last week. Global commons might well become “the decisive scarcity of the 21st century,” guest speaker Robert Stavins of Harvard University pointed out.
MCC opening: „A new kind of dialogue at the science-policy interface“

Edenhofer is also the chief economist of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research which founded the institute together with Stiftung Mercator who granted a core budget of 17 million Euro for eight years. Edenhofer thanked Stiftung Mercator and especially its president Bernhard Lorentz “for the unique opportunity” that their most generous support provides for exploring options to manage global commons such as the atmosphere, currently used for free as a disposal space for greenhouse gases, or oceans and forests.

„Stiftung Mercator is happy and proud to celebrate the opening of the Mercator Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change at its new premises in Berlin,” said Lorentz. “The MCC is our biggest single investment within our portfolio dedicated to the prevention of dangerous climate change and an outstanding example for what foundations can do to advance climate science and policy.”

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Director Edenhofer