Heidelberger Salon: Cities, Climate Change and the IPCC

11 May 2026 | 18:00 – 20:00 | Auditorium Grimm-Zentrum, Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 1–3, Berlin

An interdisciplinary panel discussion with Helmut Philipp Aust (Berlin / Heidelberg), Christoph Bernhardt (Berlin), Matthias Garschagen (Bonn), Priya S. Gupta (Montreal), Anne Holsten (Stuttgart), Angela Schwerdtfeger (Berlin), moderated by Alexandra Kemmerer (Berlin / Heidelberg).

Cities are key drivers of climate change, but also central to its mitigation and adaptation. As urban areas face increasing risks, from heatwaves to flooding, they also offer opportunities for innovative sustainability policies. Institutions such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) have identified urban areas and governments as main arenas and potential major drivers of a great planetary transformation.

This panel brings together interdisciplinary perspectives to discuss how urban emissions and risks can be reduced, what role legal frameworks play, and how urban planning can foster resilient and adaptive cities, with particular attention to the role of cities in IPCC reports and the upcoming Special Report on Cities and Climate Change (2027).

Professor Helmut Philipp Aust is a Professor of Public and International Law at the Free University of Berlin, Co-Chair of the International Law Association’s Committee on Urbanisation and International Law, and (since April 2026) Director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law.

Professor Christoph Bernhardt is Senior Fellow at the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space and Adjunct Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Professor Matthias Garschagen is Professor of Development of Urban and Rural Areas at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn and a Lead Author of the IPCC.

Professor Priya S. Gupta is Associate Professor of Law at McGill University, and is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Freie Universität Berlin Empirical Legal Studies Center (FUELS).

Dr Anne Holsten is Senior Researcher at the Bauhaus Earth (Berlin) and Associate Member of the Cluster of Excellence IntCDC, University of Stuttgart.

Professor Angela Schwerdtfeger holds the Chair of German and European Public Law, with a focus on environmental and climate law, at Freie Universität Berlin.

Alexandra Kemmerer is Senior Research Fellow and Academic Coordinator at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, and Head of the Institute's Berlin Office.

A cooperation of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (Berlin Office). Co-sponsored by the ILA Committee on Urbanisation and International Law - Potential and Pitfalls.

Please register at: berlin@mpil.de