Biodiversity crisis, climate crisis, multiple crises - challenges and solutions
Christine von Weizsäcker was the keynote speaker at this year's Sustainability Lecture. The biologist and environmental activist explained why the biodiversity crisis in particular is often neglected in the current sustainability discourse. Six final theses that were awarded the University's Sustainability Award 2023 illustrated how solutions can be found in certain areas.
At the beginning of the event, which was organized by the Competence Centre for Sustainable Development (KNE) at the Ethics Centre (IZEW), Prof. Dr. Thomas Potthast emphasized that this year the jury did not find it easy to select the six theses from a large number of outstanding applications.
Three bachelor's and three master's theses were awarded. The Bachelor's prizewinners are Mareike Andert (Political Science), Jana Mayer (Environmental Sciences) and Leonie Sohr (Teaching Ethics/Philosophy and Chemistry). Mareike Andert dedicated her thesis to the planned Neckar-Alb regional light rail system and investigated the extent to which the narratives used by supporters and opponents of the project led to the decision against the inner-city route through Tübingen. In order to assess the impact of wind farms on a continental level, Jana Mayer examined conflicts between planned wind farms and nature reserves on the African continent. Leonie Sohr evaluated the use of phosphonates in detergents, whose degradation products are classified as environmentally critical, from an ethical point of view.
The prize-winning Master's theses were written by Niklas Best (Geoecology), Carina Haller (International Economics) and Jonas Mertens (Molecular Medicine). Niklas Best's thesis was dedicated to recording two ecosystem services in urban areas and showed how cities can contribute to environmental and climate protection. In her work, Carina Haller analyzed the energy consumption of low-income households and derived socio-political implications from this. Jonas Mertens investigated which immune mechanisms can be used to stop the spread of the malaria pathogen Plasmodium in the liver and made the connection to the UN Sustainable Development Goal "Health and Well-being".
"Please don't be surprised if I don't talk about pandas, orchids and whales." This is how Christine von Weizsäcker opened her Sustainability Lecture following the award ceremony - and promised a differentiated view of the current crises. The biologist, who has received many awards for her commitment, has sat at the negotiating table of various international agreements for the protection of the environment and is still a member of numerous scientific and civil society organizations.
Although Ms. von Weizsäcker described the UN "Convention on Biological Diversity" (CBD/Convention on biological diversity, 1992) as the high point of multilateral agreements, she also named setbacks and challenges at the same time. Global status reports show that the loss of biodiversity is still increasing dramatically today, and although key drivers have been identified, they have by no means been halted. To this day, biodiversity-damaging behaviour is even subsidized unchecked in large parts: "Biodiversity policy must fail as long as so much is invested in measures that systematically destroy nature". She was stunned by the EU Commission's recent decision to extend the approval of the total herbicide glyphosate for a further ten years.
The biodiversity crisis is 'just' one of many other crises. Ms. von Weizsäcker focused on poverty, hunger, wars, climate change and the power of corporations and the super-rich, among other things. In the search for answers to these crises, we encounter weak legal systems, growing insecurity, polarization, deeply indebted states and rich countries that would rather clear their conscience with CO2 certificates than adapt their lifestyle. New, supposedly nature-based solutions are also causing sometimes insoluble land conflicts in reality. Ms. von Weizsäcker, on the other hand, sees real solutions in rich countries taking genuine responsibility, e.g. through strong supply chain laws. The principles of the 1992 UN environmental conference in Rio have lost none of their significance to this day. The sectoral objectives of the 17 UN sustainability goals are more problematic: What actually counts are consolidated positions as a consensus between different sectors and the integration of different policy areas, as the keynote speaker illustrated using the example of the "One Health" concept.
She also identified obstacles to finding solutions in the current scientific system: For example, science is increasingly only seen as a contribution to international competitiveness and it is considered unscientific to propose political solutions. Accordingly, she appealed to established scientists to explicitly promote inter- and transdisciplinary excellence and take it into account when making appointments. At the same time, she called for intellectual modesty: Pointing out gaps in knowledge helps to advance interdisciplinary and intercultural collaboration, she said.
Finally, Ms. von Weizsäcker questioned whether the term "crisis" was even appropriate: many of the current "crises" had not occurred suddenly and unexpectedly. She preferred to speak of a "search for a seamlessly viable, damage-minimizing, resource-conflict-avoiding and just way of transitioning to a more sustainable culture". The biologist has high hopes for a science that responds to the multiple crises with systemic, multidimensional, inter- and transdisciplinary and participatory approaches and contributes to solutions. In this spirit - and that of the sustainability awards - she concluded by emphasizing the role of universities as "places of structurally supported, shared learning that promotes and celebrates creative knowledge breakthroughs".
Report: Maximilian Irion und Charlotte Müller
Link to the recording:
The Sustainability Lecture 2023 was recorded and published on the University of Tübingen's media portal ("timms"):
https://timms.uni-tuebingen.de/