Jochen Hinkel is a decision scientist, heading the department of Adaptation and Social Learning at the Global Climate Forum (GCF) and teaching as an external professor at the Division of Resource Economics at the Thaer-Institute at Humboldt University in Berlin. His research focuses on decision making, policy making and governance in face of climate risks and associated societal transformations, with a specific focus on coastal adaptation. Hinkel thereby combines the following two complementary perspectives. From a prescriptive perspective, he applies normative decision theory, together with state-of-the-art climate impact models, in order to co-develop, together with stakeholders, desirable, efficient and robust adaptation pathways at all scales, from local city-level to global scale analysis (e.g., PROTECT project, Global Coastal Model Intercomparison Project). In this context, Hinkel leads the development of the DIVA framework, an integrated global modelling framework for assessing sea-level rise impacts and adaptation related to coastal erosion, flooding, wetland change and human displacement. From a descriptive perspective, Hinkel applies theories of institutional economics and political sciences in local case studies in order to understanding how coastal decisions and policies are actually made, and what is driving such institutional change in terms of legislation, power structures, vested interests, norms and conventions. Hinkel has contributed as a Lead Author on coastal risk, adaptation and governance to the Fifth Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) and its Special Report on the Ocean and the Cryosphere (SROCC). He also co-lead work on coastal decision making in the United Nation’s World Climate Research Programme (WCRP).
Global Climate Forum
