Headline: Events in 2020

The current Covid Pandemic brings to the fore the urgent need to address sustainability as a global, complex, systemic and societal problem. The Forum will focus on the responsibility of scientific institutions and administrations in the context of the pandemic to address the sustainability issue. We will specify the role of scientific institutions (such as universities and science academies) in facilitating the access and usability of sustainability knowledge for business communities, policymakers and the civil society.

EU-Russia energy relations are currently dominated by trade in oil and gas. Russia is the EU’s largest supplier of hydrocarbons, while the EU represents its largest export market. As the EU continues to decarbonize its energy sector, imports of fossil oil and gas are expected to decrease over the coming decades. This development does not necessarily mean that the EU will no longer be dependent on energy imports, however. Rather, it is likely that the EU, led by a number of ambitious member states, will transition to the import of renewable energy and possibly decarbonized natural gas.

With increasing support across the globe, innovations in carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) technologies are now widely acknowledged to contribute to achieving climate mitigation targets while creating economic opportunities. In order to assess the potential benefits and reduce environmental and commercial risks of these innovations life-cycle assessments (LCA) and techno-economic assessments (TEA) are needed that inform decision makers in industry, science and policy.

How can we learn to move away from exploitive research practices? How do co-production of knowledge, cooperation, and participatory research work in practice? What can be gained through taking the local perspective? How can better communication be fostered across academic disciplines, activism, local communities, etc.? These are some of the questions that will be discussed at this 2-day virtual workshop on Methods and ethics in Arctic transformative research.

Die Arbeitsgruppen der Plattform befassen sich damit, was es für eine Transformation zu mehr Nachhaltigkeit benötigt: Welche Rahmenbedingungen braucht es? Wie schafft es die Gesellschaft, dass Brandenburger und Brandenburgerinnen an dem Prozess teilhaben? Wie lassen sich die notwendige Digitalisierung und Nachhaltigkeit zusammenbringen? Wie können Lebensqualität und Gemeinsinn gleichermaßen gefördert werden? Darüber haben die Arbeitsgruppen der Nachhaltigkeitsplattform Brandenburg in den vergangenen acht Monaten diskutiert und stellen Ihre ersten Ergebnisse am Montag, den 21. September zur Diskussion zusammen mit Landwirtschaftsminister Axel Vogel, Mitgliedern der Staatskanzlei und Mitgliedern der Interministeriellen Arbeitsgruppe für Nachhaltigkeit.

Die Auseinandersetzung mit der Natur – der vom Menschen gestalteten ebenso wie der wilden, unabhängig vom Menschen existierenden – ist eine wesentliche Motivation für die vier Künstlerinnen und Künstler der Ausstellung. Als aufmerksame und sensible Beobachterinnen und Beobachter unserer Zeit wollen sie mit ihren Werken Diskussionen in Gang bringen und den Status quo in Frage stellen.

In the face of the challenges that have emerged and been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, collective responses by and for communities have emerged in Latin America (e.g. community food banks and open data citizen-led initiatives). In view of this development, the research group Democratic Reconfigurations of the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) Potsdam has decided to convene a Cabildo por América Latina (CabildoxLatAm), a participatory digital space to learn, strengthen and design collective responses to the pandemic. The event will bring together civil society actors, governments, communities and citizens from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, and Puerto Rico.