The Alfred Wegener Institute would like to thank all its employees, partners and sponsors for the great cooperation in 2023. We wish you happy holidays and all the best for 2024!

Dear readers,

As the year draws to a close, we’re back with the latest instalment of our newsletter. In this normally peaceful time of year, we look back on a turbulent time: the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28), which several AWI employees participated in, has just ended. In this “Inside AWI”, one of our participating researchers, sea-ice physicist Dr Stefanie Arndt, shares her personal takeaways from COP28.

A reason to celebrate: AWI scientist Prof Dr Ulrike Herzschuh has been awarded the prestigious Leibniz Prize 2024 for her research work as a polar biologist. The prize includes up to 2.5 million euros in funding, provided by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Congratulations!

Another highlight: the Alfred Wegener Institute was honoured with a German Sustainability Award for companies! In this issue, Sustainability Officer Wiebke Hayen answers our three questions on the prize.

You can find out more about these and other milestones below. But aside from all these achievements, we want to put the spotlight on something else: we wish all our readers a joyous and above all restful Christmas, and a Happy New Year! Thank you for your continued interest; we look forward to sharing more news from the Alfred Wegener Institute with you in 2024.

Enjoy reading!

Marlena Witte
Communications and Media Relations

"For the past few weeks, the eyes of the world have been fixed on one of the most absurd places possible for such vital climate negotiations: a city that lives on oil, one that is as artificial as it gets – and one that is still striving to go higher, faster and further. Striving for superlatives. And that’s also the basic feeling I got from COP28: with more than 80,000 registered participants, it was the largest ever of its kind. As a COP “newbie”, this aspect was both challenging and impressive – to see how people from around the globe, with vastly different backgrounds, were pursuing the same cause was truly amazing.

Even before COP28 began, it was clear that it wouldn’t be an easy task. The goals were ambitious: to take stock of the current state of implementation for the goals set in the 2015 Paris Agreement; and to discuss adaptation strategies and how to phase out fossil fuels. And behind it all, the big question: could we still make the 1.5-degree target?

To underscore the importance of meeting this target, in countless presentations and panel discussions, we researchers attending showed how the climate system’s components are already changing – which is only a taste of what will happen if we fail to meet the target. At the “Cryosphere Pavilion”, I had the opportunity to be part of two international, interdisciplinary panel discussions on the alarming trends now being seen in the Antarctic sea ice.

And even though there was no commitment to phase out fossil fuels in the conference’s final declaration, at least it did call for doing so. Whether or not we’ll actually meet the 1.5-degree target in this way remains to be seen. But I can say this: despite all the current crises, this COP once again focused the attention of society and political decision-makers on the climate crisis – and I, together with my AWI colleagues Dr Claire Treat and Prof Hans-Otto Pörtner, had the chance to do my part there as a multiplier of sound scientific findings!"

Dr Stefanie Arndt

Thank you! But I’m not the only one who should be congratulated. At the AWI, sustainability isn’t limited to my department; it concerns all our activities and operations. Consequently, we received the prize in recognition of our sustainability achievements in connection with research, with corresponding knowledge transfer activities, and with relevant activities in our administration and infrastructure. We’re all part of it!

In the first step, there was the option of actively applying or – as was the case with us – being nominated by a jury of experts. The jury, which included experts from the sustainability sector, civil society, corporate consulting and the scientific community, made the final selection. The AWI won the sector award for R&D and testing services.

In the jury’s statement, we were described as “one of the world’s most important and effective actors in the Arctic, Antarctic and the oceans” – a great honour!

3.What are our next goals when it comes to sustainability?

Last year, we set goals for reducing our greenhouse-gas emissions, increasing the share of our energy that is regenerative and self-produced, and boosting energy efficiency at our facilities. Implementing those goals is of course something we’ll continue to focus on. Visible changes we’ll see in the near future will include the installation of solar panels on some of the buildings at our Bremerhaven site.

Further goals are currently being defined – here, aspects like ship, station and aircraft operations; upstream and downstream emissions resulting from the purchase and disposal of goods and services, particularly in connection with construction services; business travel; and employee mobility need to be considered.

In addition, we are working to improve our environmental performance in connection with biodiversity and the avoidance of (micro-)plastic. We also plan to revisit existing goals regarding social sustainability, like diversity.