Whether it is climate change, biodiversity loss, or the energy transition – public perception is crucial to understanding when and how environmental changes and their consequences are interpreted as crises and politicized. Participants in a workshop organized as part of the Leibniz Lab “Disruptions and Transformations” explored this issue in depth:
On March 12, 2026, the Berlin office of the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt and the GESIS— Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences hosted an event at the Leibniz Association’s building in Berlin. Around 20 participants from academia, public administration, foundations, and think tanks, as well as policymakers, exchanged views on the nexus between public opinion and environmental crises. Presentations by individual participants and group discussions focused, among other things, on the role of survey data in climate and environmental policy, the potential and challenges in using and linking environmental data with survey data, and how the gap between researchers, data collectors, and policymakers can be bridged to achieve effective climate governance.
The goal was to gain a better understanding of how the other groups work and the logic behind their approaches, to identify challenges and potential solutions, and to build personal networks in order to facilitate future collaboration and efficient problem-solving. As was the case following a previous Leibniz Lab workshop with a similar format on public opinion and foreign and security policy, the insights from the workshop will be presented in a Spotlight.
