Dr. Alexandra Dehnhardt heads the Ecological Economics and Environmental Policy research field at the IÖW
Dr. Alexandra Dehnhardt (Photo: privat)
Since December 2023, the agricultural scientist and environmental economist Dr. Alexandra Dehnhardt is head of the research field ‘Ecological Economics and Environmental Policy’ at the Institute for Ecological Economic Research (IÖW) in Berlin. She jointly leads the research field together with the sustainability and transformation scientist Dr. Florian Kern. The IÖW is a leading scientific institute in the field of practice-oriented sustainability research. Around 70 staff members develop strategies and approaches for sustainable economic activity, mainly with funding from public clients at EU, federal and state level.
Member of the ‘Forum Zukunftsstrategie’ of the BMBF
Alexandra Dehnhardt is the only representative of an independent sustainability research institute to be appointed by Federal Research Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger to the ‘Forum Zukunftsstrategie’ of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The committee advises the Federal Government on the implementation of the Future Research and Innovation Strategy, which aims to coordinate research and innovation policy between the different policy areas. Dehnhardt is committed to ensuring that the strategy for the future is consistently aligned with the guiding principle of sustainable development and that technical and social innovations are more consistently considered together.
What climate change costs, how cities can become more water-sensitive and private gardens more biodiverse
With Alexandra Dehnhardt, the IÖW research field “Ecological Economics and Environmental Policy” has an experienced expert in biodiversity and climate adaptation at its head. She focuses on the economic valuation of natural resources and ecosystem services as well as cost-benefit analyses, particularly in the context of water and biodiversity policy and climate change, and institutional aspects of environmental policies. Among other things, the focus of her work is on the relevance and use of economic approaches in politics and administration as well as the institutional framework for the integration of nature’s values in political and administrative decision-making.
Dehnhardt is currently conducting research in the Soilguard project on sustainable soil management, in the Schwammstadt project on water-sensitive cities and in gARTENreich on the design of species-rich private gardens. On behalf of the Federal Ministry of Economics, she led the project ‘Costs of climate change impacts in Germany’, in which the IÖW, together with partners, assessed the economic consequences of climate change based on past extreme weather damage and a scenario analysis up to 2050.
Alexandra Dehnhardt joined the IÖW in 1999 and worked there as a research assistant until 2007. This was followed by a research position at the Technical University of Berlin, where she completed her doctorate with distinction in the field of landscape economics (dissertation) and taught and researched for three years as a visiting professor of landscape economics together with IÖW colleague Dr. Jesko Hirschfeld. She has been back at the IÖW as a research associate since 2017.
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