Katherine Richardson is a Professor of Biological Oceanography and Leader of the Sustainability Science Centre at the University of Copenhagen. She was Chair of the Danish Commission on Climate Change Policy which developed the plan for removing fossil fuels from the Danish energy and transport sectors upon which the current national energy strategy is based. She is a member of the Danish Council on Climate Change and a member of the United Nations Scientific Panel to draft the Global Sustainable Development Report, published in 2019.
Her research is carried out in the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate and focuses on biogeochemical processes in the surface ocean and how these are influenced by climate change. Specifically, her work deals with how changes in climate and biodiversity in the ocean interact to influence the global carbon cycle. She is also a co-leader in the development of the Planetary Boundaries framework aiming to identify a safe operating space for humanity in relation to its perturbation of the global environment.
