Tabea Lissner

Fellow, Global Solutions Initiative

Tabea Lissner has an academic background in Geography, Political Science and Environmental Management and received her PhD in Geography from Humboldt University of Berlin in 2014. She developed the work for her thesis as a Junior Researcher in the Climate Change & Development Group at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and was awarded the “Outstanding Young Scientist” Award by the European Geosciences Union in its division Energy, Resources and Environment for her work.

Her scientific work focusses on improving quantitative representations of adaptation and adaptation effectiveness, with a focus on how adaptation effectiveness might change with increasing warming. Her specific interests lie in understanding potential limits and barriers to adaptation, but also enabling conditions and broader beneficial outcomes of adaptation and how all of these aspects can be identified and better represented in global quantitative models. Tabea’s work aims to bridge the gap between the very context-specific adaptation needs on the ground, especially of the most vulnerable, and the global challenges and responses that these processes are embedded in. Her work is relevant to important policy processes around adaptation, including in the context of UNFCCC and access to climate finance.

From July 2023 to July 2024, she was Research Director of the Global Solutions Initiative. Prior to joining GSI, she was co-head of the Science Team at Climate Analytics, leading the team’s work on climate change adaptation, vulnerability, and risk. She was also co-head of Programme Strategies as part of the Executive Team.

During the Academic Year 2022/23, she was an invited research fellow at THE NEW INSTITUTE in Hamburg, where she was involved in the program “Socio-Economic Transformation.”

Tabea was also a lead author of the chapter “Water” and a drafting author of the “Summary for Policymakers (SPM)” of the recently published IPCC 6th Assessment Report of Working Group II.

She has published in a number of peer-reviewed journals on topics around climate impacts, vulnerability and adaptation as well as loss and damage.

See full publication list here.