Headline: RIFS Blog

The blog of the Research Institute for Sustainability (RIFS) contains contributions from employees in all RIFS departments and covers a huge range of themes. In addition to discussing the latest research findings and events, the blog authors comment on political developments.

 

Looking Back at the First Years of the Franco-German Forum for the Future With Gilles de Margerie

Gilles de Margerie, who has led the French government’s policy analysis institute France Stratégie since 2018, has served as the French Co-Director of the Franco-German Forum for the Future since its founding in 2020. As de Margerie’s term of office as Commissioner General at France Stratégie draws to a close, his German counterpart Frank Baasner spoke with him about the Forum’s achievements.

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Organizational Transformation in the European Commission

A systemic sustainability transformation requires fundamental shifts in various areas of society. A particularly persistent need for change lies in the organisational structures of political administration and decision-making. Here, many of the prevailing structures stem from rather traditional mindsets that are ill-suited to the complex, interconnected crises and challenges facing societies today. Traditional administrative structures lack resilience and adaptability, particularly as many of the people working within these structures suffer from excessive workloads and are frustrated by what they experience as a lack of agency. This is reflected by rising rates of burnout and other poor health outcomes.

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Resolving Conflicts Around the Energy Transition

Running over three years, the research project "Demokon - A Democratic Conflict Culture for the Energy Transition" studied the characteristics of energy transition conflicts, explored their interactions with political populism, and considered options to improve their resolution. The project was funded by the Mercator Foundation and carried out by researchers from the Research Institute for Sustain (RIFS), Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences, Göttingen Institute for Democracy Research, the University of Siegen and the communications agency Institut für Raum und Energie.

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Energy transition

The Geological Subsurface and Its Potential for the Energy Transition

If Germany’s geological subsurface is mentioned at all in public debate, then usually in the context of the potential exploitation of fossil energy resources such as natural gas. But the deep subsurface harbours many other opportunities that could be harnessed to build a more sustainable economy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Tapping into these opportunities will require immense efforts and quite likely some very difficult decisions. So what exactly does the geological subsurface have to offer?

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Justice in Sustainability

Climate Mobility Justice: Reparations, Kinopolitics and Mobile Commoning

What do reactive border closures and the de-nationalization of undocumented populations around the world have to do with the climate crisis-mobility nexus? As part of the RIFS public lecture series `Justice in Sustainability’, Dr Mimi Sheller recently examined the interconnections of the climate crisis, unsustainable mobilities, and migration through the lens of the politics of movement, also known as kinopolitics.

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Justice in Sustainability

African Judicial Environmentalism, Community Mobilization and the Quest for Sustainability

Africa is a continent rich in cultures, natural resources and biodiversity. However, the continent faces diverse environmental challenges, including pollution, deforestation, and species extinction. In a recent lecture Dr. Caiphas Brewsters Soyapi argued that traditional knowledge offers a moral compass that Africans can use to find their own response to ecological problems, a view that many judiciaries are coming to share.

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Friedrichstrasse

Lessons for participatory urban planning

Seit 2020 ist ein Abschnitt der Friedrichstraße für Menschen zu Fuß oder mit dem Fahrrad geöffnet und für dem Autoverkehr geschlossen. Das Berliner Verwaltungsgericht hat im Oktober verkündet, dass auf diesen circa 500 Metern der Friedrichstraße wieder Autos fahren sollen. Jenseits des Juristischen Streits dreht sich die Debatte darum, ob der Einzelhandel leidet, wenn Kunden nicht mit dem Auto kommen können. Aber diese Debatte greift zu kurz.

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Reshaping the city – a top-down or a bottom-up process?

The debate on “Kiezblocks” (similar to the concept of low-traffic neighbourhoods) in Berlin has so far been driven by civil society. Now, the engagement of more than fifty of them has got the new red-red-green government coalition in Berlin to anchor Kiezblocks in their coalition agreement. Even researchers and the public administration are starting to take the idea seriously. But how does an idea go from a demand to a democratically taken decision, and then to implementation? Are these processes a symbol of participative urban planning, or is their being taken up in the coalition agreement instead a top-down government programme? Does it even matter? In this blog post, we hope to shed some light on these questions.

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German Election

The Desire for Continuity in Change

The SPD's success in the Bundestag elections is surprising, even though the polls predicted this outcome in the days and weeks leading up to the election. In July, polls by infratest-dimap and the Elections Research Group suggested that the SPD could win as little as 15-16 percent of the vote and a neck-and-neck race between the CDU/CSU and the Greens seemed likely. But things turned out differently, and now the Social Democrats are the victors, even though the SPD's 25 percent win is a far cry from the results returned by previous SPD chancellors.

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