WIMEK Mission & Grand challenges
WIMEK's research is focused on pressing environmental challenges. The research within WIMEK is performed by its participating chair groups, combined in clusters.
Mission
WIMEK aims to develop an integrated understanding of environmental change and its impact on the quality of life and sustainability and offers solutions for environmental improvement, by:
- Conducting innovative scientific research.
- Offering PhD training and education.
- Dissemination of emerging insights and recent research results.
The WIMEK Research Programme
WIMEK combines fundamental, strategic, applied and participatory research in environmental, climate and sustainability sciences, both from a social sciences and a natural sciences point of view, focusing on pressing environmental problems and sustainable solutions with local to global significance. Moreover, our fundamental disciplinary research efforts and innovative inter- and transdisciplinary (including stakeholders) research efforts are both needed to contribute to real solutions for the current emerging complex environmental issues. WIMEK especially promotes interdisciplinary research focusing on the interactions between ecological, chemical, physical and socio-economic processes and their interactions with society. This is considered to be essential for a solid contribution towards solving complex environmental problems.
Our research programme strongly concentrates on the components of the cause-effect chain of environmental problems:
- Environmental contaminants and nutrients, including biotechnological and physico-chemical processes for sustainable use and reuse of water, energy, minerals and materials;
- Environmental processes and ecosystem dynamics;
- Global and regional environmental change; and
- Sustainable development and social change: actors, institutions and governance.
WIMEK Climate Policy
Climate Change is one of the most pressing environmental problems for humanity. The IPCC scientific assessments indicate that global warming of 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century, unless rapid and deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades. The Wageningen Institute for Environment and Climate Research (WIMEK) studies climate mitigation and adaptation and considers “Climate Action” as a main challenge to contribute to. WIMEK aims to contribute to this not only through research and teaching, but also by promoting actions to reduce the footprint. WIMEK wants to provide inspiring and good examples of policies aimed at reducing the climate impact footprint. Want to know more? Go here for more information on the climate policy of WIMEK.
WIMEK's Grand Challenges
WIMEK has identified three major environmental challenges. WIMEK intends to contribute to finding solutions to these challenges by performing scientific research and disseminating its results to relevant stakeholders such as policy makers. Read more on the pages below.
