Justice in Sustainability is the RIFS focal topic for 2022/23.

Overline: Focal Topic 2022/2023

Headline: Justice in Sustainability

The issue of justice is increasingly playing a greater role in the transformation towards sustainability. Calls to improve justice outcomes touch on a variety of issues, in particular the distribution of the costs and benefits of transformations as well as the burdens of climate change and environmental degradation. Other claims target procedural aspects: Who should have access to decision-making about transformation towards sustainability? A third set of justice claims focuses on recognition: Which groups are or should be recognized as rights-holders or as affected or especially vulnerable populations?

These claims arise in different fields and sectors: Countries from the Global South argue that those countries most responsible for the climate crisis should shoulder a greater burden and call for efforts to deliver equal access to energy. Matters of social justice also loom large in discussions around the coal exit and the adoption of a carbon tax.

Recent years have seen a surge of interest across the scientific community in the nexus of justice and sustainability, and the relevance of research on issues such as just transitions and equity in governance. RIFS made justice and sustainability a key focus of its activities in 2022 and 2023. Throughout the year we gathered together the diverse threads of this debate with the aim of rendering visible the various dimensions of injustice within transformations towards sustainability and developing suitable solutions.

Lecture Series Calendar

30.01.2023 3pm – 4.30pm (CET) Infrastructuring environmental (in)justice: on the political geographies of energy technologies in planetary crises. Benno Fladvad (RIFS)
Online via Zoom.

21.02.2023 4pm – 5.30pm (CET) Klima- und Umweltpolitik: eine Frage von Privilegien? Zwei lokale Initiativen teilen ihre Erfahrungen aus Deutschland und Frankreich. Fatima Ouassak (Verdragon) und Gülcan Nitsch (Yeşil Çember)

Les politiques de transition écologique : une affaire de privilégiés? Deux initiatives locales issues des quartiers populaires partagent leurs expériences en France et en Allemagne Fatima Ouassak (Verdragon) et Gülcan Nitsch (Yeşil Çember)

Lecture will be exceptionally held in German and French only. Online via Zoom.

29.03.2023 3pm – 4.30pm (CET) Lützerath Debrief: Legacy & lessons. Ruairí Casey, Judith Pape and Elias König

RIFS Potsdam at Helmholtzstr. 5 (bank building) in Potsdam or online via Zoom.

24.04.2023 3pm – 4.30pm (CEST) What Kind of Social-Ecological Transformations? Some Critical Considerations of the Concept of Justice in Times of the Deepening Multiple Crisis and Growing Eco-Imperial Tensions. Ulrich Brand (University of Vienna)

22.05.2023 3pm – 4.30pm (CEST) Rights of Nature and their Transformative Potential for more Sustainable Futures? Struggling for Alternatives to Destructive Anthropocentric Development. Riccarda Flemmer (University of Tübingen)

Online via Zoom. Register here for participation.

26.06.2023 3pm - 4.30 (CEST) Territories of Life and Sacrifice Zones. Geoffrey Garver (McGill University)

Hybrid event. Register here for the on-site participation at the RIFS canteen at Helmholtzstraße 5, D-14467 Potsdam. Register here for online participation.

All events will be either online or hybrid.

The complex dimensions of justice in sustainability

"Gerechtigkeit und Nachhaltigkeit"-Newsletter Anmeldeformular

Events

News

In a podcast series, RIFS researchers discuss the role of carbon in climate and sustainability politics. They talk to academics, activists and artists whose work has influenced their own research on the transformations of our carbon-dependent society. In the fourth episode, Usha Natarajan (Columbia University/Dalhousie University) and Julia Dehm (La Trobe Law School) discuss their book “Locating Nature: Making and Unmaking International Law”.

Although structural transformations of the kind unfolding in Lusatia affect everyone, young people are rarely involved in decision-making processes. And yet everyone should have a say in shaping the future! The research project "Social Transformation and Policy Advice in Lusatia" at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) has developed a simulation game for six to 30 players in cooperation with game developers "Playing History". The game, which is suitable for younger audiences, was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

Young people march for intergenerational justice at the climate strike demonstration on 27 September 2019 in Barcelona

The climate crisis continues to be a major concern for many young people, who must also grapple with new and emerging crises such as the war in Ukraine. This has serious implications for mental health and lends urgency to the issue of intergenerational justice. In recent years, young people have sought to bring the responsibilities of older generations toward younger people more sharply into focus in environmental and climate debates. In a new paper, IASS researchers show how sustainable futures have become an important issue in climate policy discourse.

Dr. Benno Fladvad

The ambivalent role of material infrastructure (and especially large-scale energy technologies) in planetary crises has attracted increasing scholarly attention in recent years. RIFS Fellow Benno Fladvad examined this issue in January’s Justice in Sustainability lecture.

Anke Kläver

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.

Prof. Dr. Louis Kotzé

Alexandra Tost

Dr. Bernardo Jurema

As we start off the new year and set our sights on new goals and projects, we also want to take stock of the many activities and achievements of the RIFS “Justice in Sustainability” focal topic team during 2022.

Young people will suffer the consequences of climate change. But they are not making decisions today. An intergenerational contract would solve this dilemma, write Anne Rist (Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations) and Sebastian Helgenberger (RIFS) in DIE ZEIT (in German).

Link zum Artikel

A publication of the project "Mobilising the Multiple Opportunities of Renewable Energies" highlights employment opportunities and gender inequality in the energy sector and suggests a number of key areas to promote gender-equal careers in renewable energy.

Link to the publication

The climate justice movement has developed momentum and contributed to putting the climate crisis on the political agenda in Germany. The most visible movement actors are Extinction Rebellion, Ende Gelände and Fridays for Future. Their public communication on the climate crisis reveals different thematic emphases. The study analyzes comparatively the narrative structures of press releases and blog articles.

Link

Overline: Focal Topic 2022/2023

Headline: Justice in Sustainability

Lecture Series Calendar

The complex dimensions of justice in sustainability

Video hosted on YouTube

"Gerechtigkeit und Nachhaltigkeit"-Newsletter Anmeldeformular

Dr. Benno Fladvad