Headline: RIFS Blog

The notion of development, or what we understand as prosperity, whether of a country, group, or individual, has been shaped throughout history by social constructs that stem from colonialism as an ideology. Colonialism is entrenched in our society as a monocultural form of domination and understanding and shaping the world. Its influence extends to the ways in which we interact with each other and with nature.

The struggle for agrarian and environmental justice by the farmers movement in Northwest India was the second lecture in this year’s IASS Focal Topic series “Justice in Sustainability.” Our guest, Navdeep Boora, is a graduate student at the Indian Institute of Science Education & Research (IISER) Mohali. In his presentation, Navdeep gave us insights into the farmers’ protest against the Indian government’s attempt to further liberalize the country’s agricultural sector in 2021.

From 21 March to 1 April 2022 governments will continue negotiations of international regulations for deep seabed at the International Seabed Authority (ISA). Scientists from IASS will attend the 27th Session of the ISA Council as part of research on environmental standards for deep seabed mining.

The Klaus Töpfer Sustainability Fellowship of the IASS was established in honour of its founding director Prof. Dr Klaus Töpfer. It supports people who, like him, are committed to sustainable development. Applications for the Klaus Töpfer Sustainability Fellowship in 2023 are currently open, and the application deadline has been extended to April 17 2022. The fellowship seeks change agents who build bridges between science, politics, and society.

The Covid-19 pandemic gives us a glimpse of what climate change has in store for us concerning our globalized economic system. More research is needed to help us better understand these complex interconnections and to translate such insights into instruments to support decision-making.

The EU's pending Batteries Regulation is an ambitious framework to impose strict sustainability standards on the technology most important to electrification. To secure access to the lucrative EU market, global battery manufacturers will need to clean up their supply chains. US policymakers should take heed.

Confronted with the illegal war of aggression launched by Russia against Ukraine, the German government is keen to reduce Germany’s dependence on energy imports from Russia as quickly as possible. Various technical solutions, along with a diversification of energy import sources, have dominated this debate. The possibility that consumers could change their energy consumption patterns has hardly been considered so far. Yet studies in behavioural science suggest that the savings that could be achieved in the near term are significant and could help to strengthen energy security.

From 7 to 18 March 2022, governments will continue negotiations on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction under the auspices of the United Nations. After a break of nearly two years due to the coronavirus pandemic, a binding UN instrument should be ready this year.

Today marks International Women’s Day (IWD), a global celebration of the cultural, political, and socio-economic achievements of women throughout history. IWD is an opportunity to raise awareness of women’s rights and of the importance of empowering women and working towards gender equality.

Adequate crisis communication is the key to managing crises like floods or the corona pandemic.

Malika Virah-Sawmy recently joined the IASS as our new Justice and Sustainability Fellow and will be working on youth climate action during her fellowship. In this blog post she outlines her professional background and her plans for the fellowship.

The G7 Summit in June offers an opportunity to provide tangible funding commitments to developing countries in the fight against climate change. If offers fall short, the world faces the risk that rising global inequality will derail international climate efforts, writes Dr Rainer Quitzow.

The April 2021 decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court in the case Neubauer et al. vs Germany has drawn a lot of attention worldwide. Louis Kotzé, Research Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law, North-West University, South Africa and currently Klaus Töpfer Sustainability Fellow at the IASS, and Jannis Krüßmann, a young climate activist, spoke on the ruling and its wider consequences for climate litigation on January 27, 2022 as part of the focal topic "Justice and Sustainability".

The long-running dispute before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) between Poland and the Czech Republic over the Turów open-pit coal mine on the Polish side of the border came to an end two weeks ago. Under the agreement reached by the two countries, the Czech Republic is to be compensated for environmental harms caused by the mine’s operation. In response, the Czech government withdrew its complaint to the CJEU on 3 February.

The new German Government stated that it wants to “dare more progress” (“Mehr Fortschritt wagen”). But what does it mean for green tech in Germany? In short, the government wants to accelerate climate and digital innovations in particular and provide more support for start-ups that offer ‘future technologies’, thus creating positive prospects for the green tech scene in Germany.

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.