Vice-Chair

Senior Advisor for Climate Risk Management, Germanwatch.

Laura Schäfer is a political scientist and a senior advisor for climate risk management with the environmental and development organization Germanwatch. For the last 10 years she has developed
strategies, ideas and research in the context of the national and international political and scientific discourse on climate change impacts. Her interest and work is focused on the nexus of  resilience building to deal with climate change impacts, climate finance and climate justice. Currently, her policy and think tank work concentrates on developing adequate solutions to address loss and damage in the international climate policy process, a human rights-based approach to climate risk financing as well as on measures to address climate change impacts from slow-onset processes. Laura is also a co-author of the annual Climate Risk Index. In this capacity, she analyses and ranks weather-related damage events (storms, floods, heat waves etc.) and their effects on states worldwide, aiming at contextualizing the ongoing international policy debates by looking at real world impacts of climate change. Prior to her work with Germanwatch, Laura was a project manager for the Munich Climate Insurance Initiative (MCII) and a Research Associate at the United Nations University – Institute for Environmental and Human Security. In this role, she managed the MCII collaboration with G7 InsuResilience and contributed to operationalizing the InsuResilience Global Partnership and ensuring the pro-poor focus of the Initiative.
Laura Schäfer is a co-coordinator of the Working Group on Adaptation and Loss and Damage of the Climate Action Network, a global network of more than 1,500 civil society organizations in over 130 countries. In this function, she coordinates civil society advocacy and policy work around the topics of adaptation and loss and damage in the context of the international climate policy process. Laura is also active in key initiatives aiming to increase the resilience of most vulnerable groups in developing countries to climate risks and impacts including the InsuResilience Global Partnership and its working groups. She is also a member of the High-level advisory board for the Climate Risk Atlas, the Friends of the COP Presidencies “Santiago Network on Loss and Damage” Group and the Loss and Damage Collaboration.

Laura is a political scientist and historian. She holds a Master of Arts in European and World Politics and Sustainable Development from the University of Bremen, focusing on international climate policy and climate change adaptation. She obtained her Master’s degree with a thesis on climate justice in the context of German climate policy.