Torsten GrothmannCarl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg · Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law
Torsten Grothmann
Dr. phil.
About
73
Publications
31,198
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3,945
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
My research focuses on social, institutional and psychological aspects of sustainability transformations, particularly of climate change adaptation and mitigation: How to assess social and individual resilience and transformative capacities? How to foster transformative change? How to communicate climate change? How to effectively and fairly structure participatory processes on climate change adaptation and mitigation?
Additional affiliations
June 2017 - present
April 2014 - present
e-fect - dialog evaluation consulting eG
Position
- Consultant and policy advisor
August 2009 - March 2014
Publications
Publications (73)
Adaptation has emerged as an important area of research and assessment among climate change scientists. Most scholarly work has identified resource constraints as being the most significant determinants of adaptation. However, empirical research on adaptation has so far mostly not addressed the importance of measurable and alterable psychological f...
Self-protective behavior by residents of flood-prone urban areas can reduce monetary flood damage by 80%, and reduce the need
for public risk management. But, research on the determinants of private households’ prevention of damage by natural hazards
is rare, especially in Germany. To answer the question of why some people take precautionary action...
Several case studies show that social factors like institutions, perceptions and social capital strongly affect social capacities to adapt to climate change. Together with economic and technological development they are important for building social capacities.
However, there are almost no methodologies for the systematic assessment of social facto...
This paper develops governance recommendations for urban adaptation strategies based on case studies in urban regions of five
European countries, a European expert survey on guiding principles for adaptation to climate change (including more than 250
experts from all EU countries) and literature on adaptation to climate change. The case studies sho...
Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is used in many contexts to compare the monetary costs and benefits of taking different actions. It has thus been advocated as a suitable method for analysing environmental policy making as well as decisions about projects and their effects on societal welfare. Despite the valuable use in principle, its actual use in pol...
Transdisciplinary research aims to generate knowledge through science-practice interactions and is attracting increasing attention in sustainability science. However,sustainable development is characterized by vast complexities and context specificities, with a broad spectrum of relevant actors. Transdisciplinary research projects targeting at soci...
High expectations—both in science and in practice—are associated with participatory approaches especially at local levels for realising adaptation and building resilience to climate change and natural hazards. Nevertheless, there is a lack of evaluation studies that empirically confirm the many expected positive effects of participatory approaches....
Local governments are highly relevant actors when it comes to mitigating climate change impacts such as flooding. Not only do they need to implement regulatory and infrastructural measures, but they also need to promote complementing self-protective measures at the household level. The individual motivation of municipal actors to pursue climate ada...
We report the results on factors for self-protective behavior against weather extremes such as extreme heat events, drought, and heavy precipitation. Our research draws on the Model of Private Proactive Adaptation to Climate Change (MPPACC). We developed a survey instrument incorporating the main aspects of the MPPACC and other factors from related...
We report the results on factors for self-protective behavior against weather extremes such as extreme heat events, drought, and heavy precipitation. Our research draws on the Model of Private Proactive Adaptation to Climate Change (MPPACC). We developed a survey instrument incorporating the main aspects of the MPPACC and other factors from related...
Recent policy changes highlight the need for citizens to take adaptive actions to reduce flood-related impacts. Here, we argue that these changes represent a wider behavioral turn in flood risk management (FRM). The behavioral turn is based on three fundamental assumptions: first, that the motivations of citizens to take adaptive actions can be wel...
To design effective adaptation measures to a heating climate, decision-makers need a state-of-the-art, regional and sector-specific knowledge about future climate impacts. Tailoring this information to the needs of policymakers requires collaboration between scientists and stakeholders. A lot of literature on design principles and comprehension of...
Das Wissen über den Klimawandel ist nur einer von vielen Einflussfaktoren – und meist nur ein schwacher – für Handeln zum Klimaschutz und zur Anpassung an den Klimawandel. Daher ist es der zentrale Ansatz dieses Beitrags, weitere psychologische Einflussfaktoren des Klimahandelns und Wege darzustellen, wie diese kommunikativ adressiert werden können...
Der Beitrag im Online-Dossier des Klimanavigators (https://www.klimanavigator.eu/dossier/artikel/038715/index.php) fasst relevante Forschung zur Wahrnehmung des Klimawandels zusammen und leitet daraus Empfehlungen für die Kommunikation des Klimawandels ab.
Open Access at http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/6/976
While most climate change vulnerability assessments focus on regional or city-levels, this paper studies villages and their different forms of vulnerability vis-à-vis climate change. In the African context, the village level proves to be central for land-use related decision-making given the tra...
Open access at: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244017692014
Communication measures can raise protective behavior regarding climate change, natural hazards, and other health risks. For being effective in such communication, we designed a five-steps methodology and applied it to health-protective behavior during heat extremes in Austria....
Die Kommunikation des Klimawandels und der sich aus ihm ergebenden Erfordernisse für Klimaschutz- und Klimaanpassungshandeln kann dazu beitragen, das Problembewusstsein zu steigern, Akteure in Politik, Wirtschaft und Bevölkerung zum Handeln zu befähigen und zu motivieren sowie die Akzeptanz für Klimaschutzmaßnahmen zu erhöhen. Die mangelnde Wahrneh...
Der dritte Teil bildet das Herzstück des Leitfadens. Hier wird eine Methode vorgestellt, wie Sie in vier Schritten wirksame Formate für die Kommunikation von Anpassung an den Klimawandel entwickeln können. Der Leitfaden enthält Informationen und Anleitungen zu folgenden vier Schritten:
1. Zielgruppenauswahl: Hier finden Sie, wie Sie eine Zielgrupp...
Das Vermitteln von Informationen zu Klimawandelfolgen und möglichen Anpassungsmaßnahmen zur Schärfung des Bewusstseins galt lange Zeit als zentrale Empfehlung, um Menschen zu präventivem Handeln zu motivieren. In der Realität sind diese Botschaften aber oft ungehört, ungelesen und somit unwirksam. Informationen müssen zu handlungsleitendem Wissen w...
Die vorliegende integrierte Roadmap of Change vereinigt die Ergebnisse von nordwest2050 aus fünf Jahren Projektarbeit zu einer übergeordneten Strategie. Dieses Dokument ist als ein Fahrplan zur Klimaanpassung zu verstehen, der Strategien und Handlungsoptionen beinhaltet, die geeignet sein können, die Metropolregion Bremen-Oldenburg im Nordwesten »f...
Over the last years, communicating climate change adaptation has gained increasing attention in science and practise. This paper provides an overview of existing adaptation communication formats in ten OECD countries and offers recommendations for their successful design. Via online search we identified 278 communication formats on climate change a...
Due to the lack of success in climate change mitigation efforts, the importance of adaptation is becoming more and more apparent and is now one of the main imperatives of international research and action. However, research on adaptation is mostly not directly applicable to adaptation policy or practice, leaving a gap between scientific results and...
Es ist die Erfahrung aus vielen Prozessen zur Förderung des Klimaschutz- und Klimaanpassungshandelns, dass die Kommunikation der wissenschaftlichen Unsicherheiten des zukünftigen Ausmaßes des Klimawandels und seiner Folgen zum Hindernis des Klimahandelns werden kann. Auf Basis der psychologischen Kommunikations-, Entscheidungs- und Handlungsforschu...
Grundlage dieses Diskussionspapiers bildet ein Austausch von Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmern des Partizipationsworkshops über das Thema Aufklärung und/oder Partizipation. Ziel war es, zu diskutieren, welche unterschiedlichen Erfahrungen und Erkenntnisse sich in Bezug auf die eigene Rolle gegenüber Praxispartnern im Rahmen der KLIMZUG-Forschungsverb...
People are unequally affected by extreme weather events in terms of mortality, morbidity and financial losses; this is the case not only for developing, but also for industrialized countries. Previous research has established indicators for identifying who is particularly vulnerable and why, focusing on socio-demographic factors such as income, age...
Several case studies show that "soft social factors" (e.g. institutions,
perceptions, social capital) strongly affect social capacities to adapt to
climate change. Many soft social factors can probably be changed faster than
"hard social factors" (e.g. economic and technological development) and are
therefore particularly important for building soc...
Reflexive governance refers to a new practice of governance that can address long-term, highly complex and highly uncertain societal problems. We regard three areas of behavior as crucial for reflexive governance: interaction (participatory goal formulation and strategy development among various societal actors), deliberation (transdisciplinary lea...
Managing a transition from the present to a more sustainable future requires a good understanding of the dominant socio-ecological processes that have determined the pathways in the past. Key variables include water and food availability which depend on climate and overall ecosystem services, as well as energy supply and social, political and econo...
Dieser Bericht enthält die Ergebnisse der im Projekt RIVAS durchgeführten vergleichenden Analyse von 14 internationalen Fallbeispielen regionaler integrierter Vulnerabilitätsassessments. Konzept und Methodik der Projektanalyse werden in Kapitel 2 erläutert. Kapitel 3 enthält die wichtigsten Ergebnisse der projektspezifischen Analyse in Form von pro...
Der anthropogene Klimawandel ist ein gesellschaftliches Problem, das allein mit natur- und ingenieurwissenschaftlichen Modellen und Methoden nur unzureichend analysierbar ist. Um die Folgen des Klimawandels zu verstehen sowie wirksame und sozial gerechte Klimaschutz- und Anpassungsmaßnahmen entwickeln zu können, ist die sozialwissenschaftliche Fors...
The article introduces the notion of adaptiveness and discusses the role of social learning in it. Adaptiveness refers to
the capacity of a social actor or social–ecological system to adapt in response to, or in anticipation of, changes in the
environment. We explore arguments both from a theoretical perspective and through illustrations from case...
The aim of the study is to provide a starting point for further work by EEA and/or other organizations on identifying success factors and case studies on how good adaptation could work in practice at various governance levels and in different sectors. In order to achieve this, the paper presents a set of guiding principles for good adaptation in Eu...
This chapter outlines the conceptual framework for assessing and explaining the influence of international bureaucracies. It first conceptualizes international bureaucracies before elaborating the dependent variables and the concept of “influence” as used in the research, and then considers three clusters of factors that may explain variation in th...
Bisher wird in Deutschland vor allem auf schriftliche Informationsmaterialien
vertraut, um die Schadenverhütung in der allgemeinen Bevölkerung voranzutreiben.
Wie sich jedoch gezeigt hat, kann mit diesem wissenszentrierten
Ansatz zwar ein gewisses Bewusstsein von Gefahren z. B. im Haushalt, im
Gesundheitsbereich oder im Verkehr geschaffen werden, p...
The rate and extent of global climate change in recent decades were not only unique, but may be accelerating into the future. Mitigation (reduction of greenhouse gas emissions) will have an effect on the climate system only at a timescale of decades to centuries because of the climate system’s inertia. Therefore, adaptation to the changed climate i...
The rate and extent of global climate change in recent decades were not only unique, but may be accelerating into the future. Mitigation (reduction of greenhouse gas emissions) will have an effect on the climate system only at a timescale of decades to centuries because of the climate system’s inertia. Therefore, adaptation to the changed climate i...
Der vorliegende Bericht ist das Ergebnis einer Studie des Potsdam-Instituts für Klimafolgenforschung (PIK), die im Auftrag des Umweltbundesamtes (UBA) im Rahmen des Umweltforschungsplanes im Zeitraum vom 1. März 2003 bis 30. Juni 2005 durchgeführt wurde.
Das diesem Bericht zugrundeliegende Vorhaben wurde mit Mitteln des Bundesministeriums für Bildung und For-schung unter dem Förderkennzeichen 01HV0001gefördert. Die Verantwortung für den Inhalt dieser Veröffentli-chung liegt bei den Autoren.
Projects
Projects (5)
Preparing for and coping with the accelerating impacts of climate change requires adaptation in a wide range of policy areas. Yet, despite increasing calls for action, policy change to allow this is often slow. A range of counteracting forces and barriers can make it difficult to embed adaptation objectives into important policies and move them away from ‘business-as-usual’. However, deeper dynamics are also at play, where self-reinforcing mechanisms, feedbacks and path dependencies interact across different spatio-temporal scales and coalesce to establish policy lock-ins.
The aim of this interdisciplinary project is to uncover these lock-in dynamics and examine the extent to which they account for varying levels of climate change adaptation in Germany, the Netherlands and the U.K. (England).
Partizipative Entwicklung eines energetischen Nachbarschaftsquartiers in Oldenburg.
