The DIIS Climate initiative

Melting ice caps, rising sea levels, extreme weather events and other forms of climate change have a profound impact on life on Earth. They shift patterns of migration, reform global politics, shape conflicts over natural resources, create unemployment and food insecurity, and call for sustainable energy transitions to low-carbon economies. In short, the impacts of climate change are profound, long-term, and multi-directional. 

These impacts raise pertinent questions for global politics: How do global institutions respond to human-driven climate change? How does climate change interact with and re-configure existing relations of power and inequality? What are the geopolitical implications of alternative, non-fossil energy systems?

The Climate Group is a 3-year initiative from 2022-2025 that brings together DIIS researchers to explore these and other climate-related questions. The goal is to facilitate dialogue both internally and with external partners and to boost future climate research at DIIS.

Mike Speirs
Mike Speirs has extensive knowledge of economic development, nature and environment and climate change gained from research, studies and consultancies undertaken since the 1980s in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Marie L. Gravesen
Marie L. Gravesen works on the changing use, governance and conflicts over natural resources in sub-Saharan Africa, where climate- and environmental change have intensified pressures in recent years. This work therefore includes research on land rights, adaptation strategies and political manoeuvring.

Peer Schouten
Peer Schouten focuses on the intersections of conflict and climate change in Africa, having conducted research on conservation and conflict in the Congo Basin rainforest as well as herder-farmer conflict in the Sudano-Sahel.

Nauja Kleist
Nauja Kleist works on migration and (im)mobility in relation to climate change, with a specific focus on Ghana. 

Rasmus Hundsbæk Pedersen
Rasmus H. Pedersen works on the political economy of energy transitions in sub-Saharan Africa. This includes research on politics, governance, and planning, related to renewable energy, oil and gas, and land and land rights.

Helene Maria Kyed
Helene M. Kyed works on the conflict-climate change nexus in Myanmar’s contested border regions, exploring how violent conflict affects people’s experiences and perceptions of as well as abilities to cope with climate change. 

Mikkel Funder
Mikkel Funder works in collaborative partnerships to investigate the politics, implementation and outcomes of climate- and environment agendas in the Global South, with an emphasis on everyday governance and agency.

Ulrik Pam Gad
Ulrik Pram Gad studies politics in the Arctic, where climate change is a key driver and environmental security dynamics take surprising forms.

Izabela Surwillo
Izabela Surwillo studies energy and climate policies in Europe, with a special focus on energy transition in the Baltic Sea region and Central and Eastern Europe.

Rens van Munster
Rens van Munster studies how nuclear weapons have shaped ideas about humans, nature, and technology. He is also interested in the intersections between nuclear weapons, climate change and the Anthropocene.