Laura Schäfer

Laura Schäfer is Co-Head of Division for International Climate Policy at Germanwatch. Her work focuses on the topics climate foreign policy, climate resilience (including climate adaptation and addressing loss and damage) as well as climate and security. 

Laura is a trained political scientist and historian and an expert on international climate policy and climate resilience. Most recently, she has worked extensively on the development of human rights-based and climate just solutions for managing climate change impacts in vulnerable countries and communities.

Laura is co-author of the annual Climate Risk Index, in which she analyzes weather-related extreme events such as storms, floods or heat waves and their impact on countries worldwide. The aim is to use data-based analyses to contextualize the political debates on international climate policy with a view to the real consequences of the climate crisis. 

Prior to her work as Head of Division, Laura was Senior Advisor for Climate Risk Management at Germanwatch, Project Manager at the Munich Climate Insurance Initiative (MCII) and Research Associate at the United Nations University - Institute for Environmental and Human Security (UNU-EHS). In these functions, she led various projects in the field of climate foreign policy and on international climate policy processes, including UNFCCC, G7 and G20, in particular on climate risk management, climate resilience and climate finance.

Other:

• Vice-Chair of the Munich Climate Insurance Initiative (MCII) (https://climate-insurance.org/)
• Coordinator of the Climate Action Network (CAN) working group on adaptation and loss & damage (https://climatenetwork.org/)
• Co-author of the Climate Risk Index (https://www.germanwatch.org/en/cri).