Dr. Till Sterzel is a Senior Advisor Climate Policy at adelphi working in the Climate Change Adaptation and Urban Transformation departments. He is co-coordinator of the theme group on Climate Change Adaptation.
Till has 15 years of post-graduate experience as a consultant, scientist and trainer in the areas of climate impacts and vulnerability, as well as climate change and urbanisation. His main focus lies on data-driven analyses of adaptation needs and options in various human-environment systems (especially in low- and middle-income countries and in fast-growing coastal cities) and on climate information services. Within the framework of applied research and policy consulting, he works regularly on behalf of environmental ministries at both the federal and provincial level. He also regularly serves as an expert on climate information services for the European Commission. Till Sterzel is Capacity WORKS certified and has regional competencies in urban Europe and East Africa.
Till Sterzel is the author of several scientific publications in ISI-listed journals, book chapters, and reports. For his dissertation, he developed a data-driven method to standardise vulnerabilities against global (environmental) change in human-environment systems, both globally and regionally. He has several years of experience with vulnerability and cluster analyses. In addition, he was responsible for applications of geographic information systems (GIS) and digital cartography in research projects at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) for many years.
For the Centre for Rural Development (SLE) in Berlin, Till regularly conducts five- to ten-day training courses on urban transformation, climate change adaptation and vulnerability to climate change—all developed by himself and all within the framework of international development cooperation. Past course participants have included ministry representatives, city planners, scientists, students and NGO representatives from more than 40 countries. As an English native speaker, he offers these trainings in many regions of the world.
Prior to joining adelphi, Till Sterzel was a consultant for four years, during which time he worked with many project partners on climate change adaptation at the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ). The technical foundation of Till Sterzel's work comes from his seven years a research associate at PIK researching climate impact and vulnerability as well as climate change and development. He worked afterwards for about four years as an independent consultant, scientist and coach at climate-babel, which he co-founded. He worked on projects in Indonesia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, among others. As part of the scientific consortium, he developed the Climate Protection and Climate Change Mitigation Plan for the state of Hesse in 2025.
Till Sterzel studied geography with a minor in meteorology and geoinformatics at the Philipps-Universität Marburg, the Humboldt-Universität Berlin and the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium). He completed his dissertation at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research (PIK). His published doctoral thesis is titled "Analyzing Global Typologies of Vulnerability—The Cases of Rapid Urbanization and Human Security in Drylands" at the University of Potsdam.
