Politics of Climate Change, Indigenous Sustainable Development, International Development

Heike holds a PhD from the Free University of Berlin (2003) in political science, an MA from Bonn University (2000) in political science, economics and Japanese studies, and a BA from the University of East Anglia (1996) in Contemporary European Studies. She was awarded a DAAD/Monbusho scholarship (2000-02) to conduct doctoral research at the University of Tokyo and a Bonn University Exchange Scholarship (1994/95) for a year abroad at the University of East Anglia.

Heike Schroeder is Professor of Environmental Governance at the School of International Development, University of East Anglia. Her work focuses on global environmental politics, forest governance and REDD+, the international climate negotiations, indigenous peoples/knowledge and sustainable development, transformative learning, trust, sustainable food governance and planetary health. She is PI of the Indigenous-International Interactions for Sustainable Development (INDIS) project. She is also a member of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and a lead faculty member of the Earth System Governance project. Heike was a senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam in 2019. 

From 2007 to 2011, Heike was a Tyndall senior research fellow and an Oxford Martin senior fellow in forest governance at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford. From 2003 to 2007, she was a researcher at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as the Executive Officer of a 10-year international research project on the Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IDGEC), a core project of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP).

Heike's research interests include global environmental politics, forest governance and REDD+, the international climate negotiations, indigenous peoples/knowledge and sustainable development, transformative learning, trust, sustainable food governance and planetary health.

Research Activities

1. Indigenous peoples/knowledge and sustainable development

Indigenous-International Interactions for Sustainable Development

This project seeks to explore and facilitate the ways in which indigenous knowledge can inform international responses to the adverse effects of climate change and resource extraction specifically, and support sustainable, equitable and inclusive growth and development generally.

2. Forest governance

International conference on REDD+ Justice

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) has rapidly become a key pillar of international cooperation on climate change. A host of state and non-state actors at all levels of governance have entered this emerging policy field. This conference takes stock of developments to date and discusses the role of justice and equity in current debates on REDD+. Its particular aim is to discuss the limits and opportunities in deriving co-benefits from REDD+ activities.

Operationalising REDD+: actors, interests and ideas

This project includes both analysis of the international REDD+ negotiations and field work on local REDD+ projects. It addresses the changing positions and strategies of international environmental NGOs on REDD+; making sense of who influenced the broadening of REDD to include forest management and conservation activities under REDD+; the design of social safeguards; and multilevel governance of REDD+ in practice.

3. Non-state actors and climate change

Non-State Actors in the New Landscape of International Climate Cooperation

This research programme consists of two interlinked projects, which focus on the role of non-state actors in multilateral climate diplomacy as well as non-state climate governance in the transnational arena.

The role of non-state actors in the UNFCCC negotiations

This project investigates how civil society participation in the climate negotiations is being managed, and what impact non-state actors have through being on national delegations. It also addresses how side events function as a marketplace of ideas and how they get diffused into the formal negotiations, exemplified by the case of REDD+.

Urban climate governance

This project argues for an expansion of the urban climate change research agenda to include an examination of the drivers of emerging partnerships and for theorizing the emerging role of SMEs in the wider context of non-state actors. It theorizes SMEs as agents of change in the multi-level governance of climate change, and cities as niche spaces in which sustainable development paths might be explored. Using the cases of Metro Vancouver, Canada, and London, UK, the project examines the drivers of emerging partnerships between various levels of government and small businesses in the interests of climate change mitigation.  

Modules I teach on

Perspectives on Globalisation

Climate Change and Development II: Governance, Policy and Society

Globalised Agriculture and Food Systems

PhD supervision interests

Indigenous peoples/knowledge and global issues/sustainable development

Trust, knowledge, mindsets and global/local governance

Global/local environmental governance/politics/issues (including food/nutrition, plastics, POPs and mining)

Planetary health and rewilding

International climate negotiations and critiques of current climate policies

Transformations and transformative learning for wellbeing

Current PhD students

Xian Li, UEA/SUSTech

Jing Tian, UEA

Past PhD students 

Karen Anderton, Oxford

Lucy Baker, UEA

Wei Shen, UEA

Sabine Dauth, UEA

Yuli Shan, UEA 

Yang Xia, UEA

Susan Conlon, UEA

Heran Zheng, UEA

Ursula Flossmann-Kraus, UEA

Lorraine Dongo, UEA

Jana Hofmann, UEA