Tag: Sustainable Development

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Sustainability, Security, and Strategic Autonomy

tl;dr: Sustainability is vital for Europe’s strategic autonomy, resilience, and geopolitical leadership, addressing climate change as a core security issue.

Climate change is no longer only an environmental issue—it is increasingly recognized as a central factor influencing international security. As global temperatures rise, competition over critical resources such as water, food, and land intensifies, leading to heightened risks of conflict and political instability. Natural disasters, exacerbated by climate change, have triggered mass migrations, creating social tensions that can threaten regional and global stability.… Read more

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Rethinking Sustainability: A Post-Growth Perspective on the UN-SDGs

tl;dr: The UN SDGs aim to foster global sustainability by 2030, yet their reliance on economic growth (Goal 8) creates contradictions with ecological objectives. We need a post-growth critique to reform the SDGs beyond 2030, emphasizing sufficiency and planetary boundaries.

The UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, an ambitious framework for global action, has been heralded as a roadmap for tackling poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation. However, as I argue in my recent chapter on the Post-(Growth)-2030 Agenda, these lofty ambitions are undermined by a fundamental contradiction: the persistent reliance on economic growth as the engine for achieving sustainable development.… Read more

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Sustainability: From Science to Politics to Ethics: Laudation for Jeffrey D. Sachs

tl;dr: Doing sustainability science requires transgressing science, politics and ethcis – and Jeffrey D. Sachs is a role model how to achieve that with integrity and professional excellence

Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbank, 9 November 2017

Dear honoured guests, dear ladies and gentlemen,
Dear Wilfried Stadler and the entire GLOBART team,
Dear Sonia and Jeffrey Sachs:

More than 6 years ago, in the springtime of 2011, the 17th International Sustainable Development Research Conference was held at Columbia University’s Earth Institute in New York.… Read more

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Sustainability 4.0

Sustainability 4.0

tl;dr: Sustainability 4.0 implies the empowered co-creation of prosumers in order to re-shape economy and society towards social inclusiveness and ecological soundness.

[Update June 2019: published article on Sustainability 4.0 available now (in German)]

The combination of sustainability and digitalization for solving environmental, social and economic problems seems both promising as well as old hats. Most of us remember the 1980s and 1990s with their call for ecological modernization, not to be confused with the ecomodernists of today.… Read more

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Utopian Sustainability, Sustainable Utopia

tl;dr: Utopian Sustainability needs to balance boldness and humbleness to envision a convivial future in which every individual can feel both at home and free.

500 years ago, English lawyer, philosopher and humanist Thomas More published his book »Utopia«. In it he described the »republic’s best state« on the island of Utopia, a fictional place that he used as a criticism and social commentary on the present state of European society at the beginning of the 16th century.… Read more