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en:bne:ringvorlesung_wise2024-25:2024-10-17_vollmer

Introduction. "Competences for Sustainable Development"

Jürgen Vollmer

Complex Dynamics Group, Institute for Theoretical Physics

Core Questions

  • What are “Competences for Sustainable Development”?
  • What do we try to teach in the present course?

Abstract

In 2015 the UN agreed upon 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that aim to transform our world to substantially improve the living conditions of live on Earth by 2030. The Introduction to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development states

1. We, the Heads of State and Government and High Representatives, meeting at the United Nations Headquarters in New York from 25-27 September 2015 as the Organization celebrates its seventieth anniversary, have decided today on new global Sustainable Development Goals.

2. On behalf of the peoples we serve, we have adopted a historic decision on a comprehensive, far-reaching and people-centred set of universal and transformative Goals and targets. We commit ourselves to working tirelessly for the full implementation of this Agenda by 2030. …

However, not everybody agrees that we are successful in this endeavor.

  • In his 2015 Ted Talk the economist Michael Green argued that the goals can be met. However, not with business as usual.
  • In 2019 Greta Thunberg complained at the UN Climate Action Summit that “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.[…] And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”
  • Also in 2019 the award-winning writer and journalist Naomi Klein argues in her book On Fire that the transition to a better world will require a Green New Deal, and she popularizes this idea with am Emmy nominated video “Message from the Future”.
  • In 2020 the Euopean Union implements an European Green Deal, and the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announces that this will be “Europe’s man on the moon moment.”
  • Previous students of the module argued that “Sustainable Development” is an oxymoron.

In this introductory lecture I will discuss the aims and the setup of the course:

  • What are “Competences for Sustainable Development”?
  • What do we try to teach in the present course?

I also hope to learn about the attendents own point of view and potential engagements.

Literature

Climate and sustainability

German Perspectives

Web Resources

Understanding the scientific endeavor

  • Robert Ehrlich (2001): Nine Crazy Ideas in Science: A Few Might Even Be True. Princeton: Princeton UP.
  • Randall Munroe (2014): What if?. London: John Murray.
  • Alvin E. Roth (2015): Who Gets What — and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Talk on 17 October 2024 — Ringvorlesung in Winter Term 2024/25

en/bne/ringvorlesung_wise2024-25/2024-10-17_vollmer.txt · Last modified: 2024/09/02 10:27 by Jürgen Vollmer