It is the final day of the 17th Annual International Sustainable Development Research Conference in New York City and I am trying to get the mixed soup in my head together. The first day was really a shock, as Nina Fedoroff was seriously advocating genetic modified organisms as the future hope for sustainable agriculture. In a similar, although more balanced vein, Klaus Lackner argued for clean energy. Now that might at first not look like a bad thing, and I would surely love to see heavy investment in it.… Read more
Economy without Growth
Again I am returning home from a conference, this time hosted by the German Association for Ecological Economics (Vereinigung für Ökologische Ökonomie VÖÖ) in Freiburg. The general theme was dedicated to an economy without growth (Wirtschaft ohne Wachstum). The conference was organized as an extended workshop, with an input keynote by Peter Finke and Niko Paech, a World Café do gather comments on the input, and an Open Space with six corners with different topics. I co-hosted a corner with Susanne Hartard on Innovation and Business.… Read more
Ecological Economics, Degrowth and Business: The Beginning of a Field
I am just returning from the 11th conference of the International Society for Ecological Economics, held this time in Oldenburg and Bremen in Germany. As always after conferences, my mind is swirling with ideas, images and notions of what I heard and with whom I talked. This blog entry is just a very raw and weakly reflected summary.
In general, the science of ecological economics had its successes as many of its concepts and reasoning found their way into mainstream economics and politics – e.g.… Read more
Welcome to my website!
This blog is dedicated to my research on sustainability & society. Here you can find my latest ideas and thoughts as well as publications and talks on sustainability science, the discourse on postgrowth & degrowth, ecological economics, corporate responsibility, systems theory and organizational change within the next society. I’m also increasingly writing about the new era of geopolitics and Europe’s role in it, with a special focus on sustainability topics reframed from a geopolitical perspective. Feedback is always welcome.
Educating Sustainability Management
The other day I was teaching an introductory course on Sustainaibility Management to PhD students (mostly Engineers, some MBAs, some Computer Scientists). This is always an exciting experience, many different rationalities and perspectives on the issue. We discussed a case study, the sustainability report of BMW, and some important realities of corporate sustainability became clear to me.
First, for some companies, sustainability provokes some kind of “organizational schizophrenia” i.e. they refer, in the same paragraph, to sustainability and ecological awareness as well as to the overarching goal of earning profits with even the most unsustainable products.… Read more