News
Conference
KWW Conference 2025
On June 26, at the major Conference of the Centre for Competence in Heating Transition (KWW) in Halle (Saale), the W-Rob core team was represented. As part of a “heat transition sprint” presentation, we were able to present our project, our current work steps and key topics to an interested specialist audience. The KWW conference also gave us the great opportunity to follow many exciting presentations on topics relating to the transformation of the heat supply. These were very diverse, ranging from social aspects of the heating transition to questions about geothermal energy. The personal exchange with the many committed people from other cities and organisations was very enriching – the concentrated expertise at this conference was simply impressive. We were able to use this day to take away good ideas, deepen existing contacts and expand our network. A big thank you to the organizers for the successful event and the inspiring atmosphere! Dialogue.changes.perspectives.
Excursion
Excursion to Strasbourg
On March 7, 2025, the students of the MEG program had the opportunity to travel to Strasbourg for a day. There, the students gained fascinating insights into the work of the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights. The hosts, Mikaël Poutiers, Secretary of the Bern Convention, and Natalia Kobylarz, a lawyer at the ECHR specializing in environmental law, thoroughly engaged with the emerging questions about their work and shared exciting stories and advice with us.
Conference
São Paulo Meeting 2024 Climate Change – The Challenge of Global Cooperation for Urban Adaptation
The São Paulo Meeting took place from November 4th to 8th, 2024. Researchers, policy makers and community members from all over the world met to address the critical impacts of climate change on urban infrastructures and communities.
Prof. Cathrin Zengerling was, among others, a participant in the panel discussion “Governance for the City Transition” with a focus on the law and planability of urban transformation processes.
Workshop
Building on the research in the Hamburg Cluster of Excellence CLICCS – Climate, Climatic Change and Society – we presented our work on climate litigation as a social driver of deep decarbonisation.
Prof. Cathrin Zengerling, together with Jill Bähring, presented the publication “Climate Litigation as a Social Driver Towards Deep Decarbonisation II: Zooming in on Two Cases”, which analyses the Shell case decided in the Netherlands and the climate decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court.
Event
Beenovation closing event (Oct 17th 2024, Berlin)
After three years of intensive research and development on the topic of “Protection and promotion of bees and other pollinating insects in the agricultural landscape”, the duration of the 16 Beenovation projects is coming to an end.
M.Sc. Marina Klimke presented the results of the legal work package of the INTEGRA project. Part of the innovative research project was also the development of a freely available software tool to support the planning of agroforestry systems, in which information on the funding and regulatory law applicable to the respective areas can also be viewed.
News before 2024
Congress
The UFP team and partners present at the AESOP Congress 2023
As part of the conference, Jun.- Prof. Dr. Cathrin Zengerling, in partnership with Prof. Dr. Antje Matern (Erfurt University of Applied Sciences), organised a special session on “Accountable strategic planning in the age of decarbonization”.
The session was a part of the annual congress of the “Association of European Schools of Planning” held in Lodz, Poland from 11-15 July 2023. The UFP team contributed with three presentations to the session. The first presentation was by Jun.- Prof. Dr. Cathrin Zengerling, titled “Tracing accountability chains and design of climate action planning in eight international cities – on gaps, traps and bridges”. This was followed by MSc. Nikita John who presented on “Demystifying urban planning by identifying invited spaces: Status Quo of Participatory Processes in Infrastructure Planning in Delhi”. The third presentation by MSc. Ahmed Tarek Alahwal was titled “Authority in Cairo‘s climate governance: New authority bases and spaces for actors in the planning of multi-level urban climate governance”.
The other partners who presented at the session were Prof. Dr. Debora Sotto of the University of São Paulo, Brazil, Prof. Dr. Oliver Fuo & Prof. Anél du Plessis of the North West University, South Africa, Dipl.-Geogr. Andreas Obersteg of the HafenCity University in Hamburg, Germany, Univ.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. Robert Knippschild of the Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development & Technische Universität Dresden, as well as Prof. Dr. Agnes Förster of the RWTH Aachen University, Germany.
As an outcome of the contributions to this session, a special issue is in the process of being prepared for publication.
Excursion
Excursion to the European Court of Human Rights 2023
On 24.01.2023 our students had the opportunity to visit the European Court of Human Rights. We spent the morning in the premises of the Court, where we discussed with a lawyer the position of the Court on environmental law issues. Afterwards, we heard an input lecture on the topic of environmental litigation in the European Court of Human Rights and on the Bern Convention by German judge Elisabeth Lambert.