Our projects
Colloquiums and seminars
Our educational seminars on key sustainability topics address master’s students, doctoral researchers, and young journalists. The focus of our educational efforts is on recognising central concepts, intensifying the discourse about paths towards sustainable development, and competently identifying and presenting the abundance of information. Internationally recognised speakers ensure high-level scientific teaching.
Find out more about our collquiums for master’s students (in German)
Find out more about our educational seminars for young journalists (in German)
Forests for the World
Even fulfilling the Paris Climate Agreement cannot limit global warming to 2°C. However, toughening the Paris Agreement with the tools available today would wreak havoc on the global economy and cause mass unemployment. Yet a path does exist to solve the problem of meeting the 2°C limit: agreeing to an immediate stop to cutting down and burning down the rain forests as well as implementing a reforestation programme of at least 350 million hectares in the tropics and subtropics, in addition to the Paris Climate Agreement. These ‘forest solutions’ would provide for sufficient time to put the Paris measures into practice in a timely and socially acceptable way. Two climate-relevant United Nations programmes already exist: the Bonn Challenge (reforestation) and the New York Declaration on Forests (halting global deforestation) – yet their implementation has failed so far due to a lack of funding. Taken together, the two programmes would improve the annual CO2 balance by up to ten billion tons. A number of foundations – Forum für Verantwortung, the ASKO Europa-Stiftung, the foundation WWF Germany, and others – have formed a platform to make them better-known to the public.
Links and downloads:
Pan-tropical forest carbon storage within 350 million hectares of land
Thomas W. Crowther, Johan van den Hoogen & Thomas Lauber
Global Ecosystem Ecology lab, Department of Earth System Science, ETH Zürich (2021)
Forests for the World (2019)
A campaign to raise awareness of their significance for climate mitigation
Link to Foundations platform F20
Zeit WISSEN
The bimonthly science magazine ZEIT WISSEN and the initiative Encouraging Sustainability joined forces as early as 2013 to establish the ZEIT WISSEN conference Encouraging Sustainability, which will enjoy major publicity again in 2021. The conference is about the question how the gap between knowledge and action can be bridged in the intense debate about the future of the environment and society. Exciting topics and knowledgeable experts will provide momentum for sustainability initiatives in the scientific and business communities. We will present initiatives, companies, start-ups, and personalities making outstanding contributions in the field of sustainable development.
At the ZEIT WISSEN conference Encouraging Sustainability, we would like to shine the spotlight on scientists with a breakthrough in knowledge transfer or who have been dedicated to such work for a very long time – committed, established businesses or initiatives with a systematic orientation towards sustainability – young entrepreneurs with innovative, scalable business models with sustainability at their core – actors who have made exemplary contributions to changing our society. Renowned experts will provide information and inspiration in their exciting keynotes and will discuss up-to-the-minute topics such as urban development, mobility, climate change, and demography.
More information is available (in German) at mut-zur-nachhaltigkeit.zeit.de.