Research and teaching at the Chair focus on the application of economic knowledge to problems of environmental and resource management, in particular the preservation of ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation. Methods and approaches include, among others, ecological-economic modelling, the development of decision support software, as well as stakeholder interviews and choice experiments.
News
Martin Drechsler, Charlotte Gerling, and Frank Wätzold presented their work at the “Workshop on Biodiversity Economics” held October 13-15 in Paris, organized by Francois Bareille and Vincent Martinet of INRAe.
Frank Wätzold, Nonka Markova-Nenova, and Sarah Kruber (FIB) presented the IAWAKEE project at the “Night of Creative Minds” in Cottbus. Visitors of all ages had the opportunity to test climate adaptation playfully.
We congratulate Mai Nusir on the successful defense of her dissertation with the title: "Common-Pool Resources Management and Institutional Change: Three Case Studies within Jordanian Communities”.
From the 6th to the 8th of October, Qais Daraghma participated in the Water Security and Climate Change Conference 2026 in Giessen. He presented his study, “Quantifying Groundwater–Vegetation Interdependencies under Drought Stress: An Integrated VHI-SWAT-SPI Approach in the Faria Catchment, Palestine.”
Frank Wätzold and Caterina De Petris attended the NBS4Drought consortium meeting in Barcelona, 29 September - 1 October 2026.
Together with the FIB (Research Institute for Post-Mining Landscapes), we presented the IAWAKEE project at the status conference for the BMFTR funding program “RegIKlim” on September 28-29, 2026, in Berlin.
From September 21 to 24, 2026, Simeon Onya and Johan Bärwald attended the Connecting Biodiversity, Climate, and Human Behavior (CBC) Conference in Leipzig, Germany. Simeon Onya presented his paper, “Grey or Green Solutions for Coastal Protection in Developing Country Context: Evidence from a Choice Experiment in Nigeria.” Johan Bärwald also presented his paper, "Hunting for Climate-Adapted Forests: A Choice Experiment on Hunters' Preferences for Hunting Regulations."
Astrid Sturm is a new board member of the iEMSs (International Environmental Modelling and Software Society)
From September 7th to 8th, Johan Bärwald attended the 27th BIOECON Conference at St. John’s College in Cambridge. There, he gave a presentation titled “Hunting for Biodiverse and Climate-Adapted Forests – A Discrete Choice Experiment among Hunters in Northeastern Germany.”
Our team participated in the company running event on the 3rd of September. We were impressed by the 5 finishers, especially Qais Daraghmeh (first from the right), who just joined our working group and had only arrived in Cottbus a day earlier.