Andreas Fischlin elected to leadership team of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
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Prof. Andreas Fischlin has been elected Vice-Chairman of the IPCC’s Working Group II. Andreas Fischlin is a highly regarded climate researcher who has worked in the field for some 25 years and has been one of the authors involved in a number of IPCC reports.
At its 41st session, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) elected Andreas Fischlin Vice-Chairman of Working Group II. He defeated his two opponents in the election, which took place in early October in Dubrovnik, by winning 78 out of 125 votes, thereby earning himself personal congratulations from Federal Councillor Doris Leuthard. Working Group II studies the consequences of climate change and the resulting adaptations and vulnerabilities in
ecosystems. This encompasses subjects such as the implications for whole ecosystems, as well as the socioeconomic and health consequences for plants, humans and animals. In his new role, Andreas Fischlin hopes to uphold the values of scientific rigour and detailed reporting as a solid foundation for political decision-making, while ensuring that modern and efficient methods of writing and distributing reports are more widely used. He would also like to bring to his new role as Vice-Chairman the experience he gained as Co-facilitator of the structured expert dialogue at the interface between international climate policy and science that was of such decisive importance in the success of the international climate change conference in Paris.
It was during the 1990s that Andreas Fischlin first became involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was founded in 1988. Among other things, he was the lead author of a chapter in the IPCC assessment reports in 1995 and 2007. It was because of this latter report that the IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, with Andreas Fischlin honoured as a co-recipient for his commitment to better understanding and to establishing fundamental principles for combatting man-made climate change. Fischlin, who studied Biology and Systems Theory, was in charge of the systems ecology research group in the Department of Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zurich from 1988-2015 and played an important role in developing the Environmental Sciences course at ETH Zurich, which began in 1987. In 2009, the ETH Board appointed Andreas Fischlin as an adjunct professor at ETH Zurich.
For more about Andreas Fischlin, see the external page IPCC website, articles in the Tages-Anzeiger from external page 08.10.2015 and external page 15.12.2015 and posts on the ETH Zukunftsblog (“Future Blog”)