Agenda:

6:30 pm – 7:00 pm (hybrid): Introduction – Environmental Lecture Series

7:00 pm – 8:30 pm (in person):  Festival DOK.fest – Film presentation and 30 min live discussion afterwards:

“GERMANY REPRESENT – JUNG, WEIBLICH, POLITISCH“ by Jannika Quaas 
(OV in German language with English subtitles)

“How many obstacles do we, as a society, put in the way of people who are supposedly ‘different’?” asks Nyke Slawik. As of September 26, 2021, news headlines were flying around her person: “Nyke Slawik – First Trans Woman in the German Bundestag.” But Nyke is more than this headline. The film accompanies her in the months of her candidacy until her election success. Meanwhile, Audrey Dilangu from the SPD in Dinslaken and Lilli Fischer from the CDU in Erfurt are fighting their very own battles in local politics. The three women have one thing in common: despite hate messages and racism, they defend their seemingly inexhaustible commitment. Jan Sebening

Prof. Dr. Florian Kapmeier is Professor of Strategy at ESB Business School of Reutlingen University, Research Affiliate of the MIT Climate Pathways Project, and Partner of NGO Climate Interactive. He presents En-ROADS with his co-authors at scientific conferences on management and climate change, such as Academy of Management, International Conference of the System Dynamics Society, European Geoscience Union, American Geoscience Union, the UN COPs, and IPCC Germany. He led a project funded by the Ministry of the Environment of Baden-Württemberg to produce all En-ROADS materials in German. Furthermore, Worldwide, Prof Kapmeier is among the top 3 users of the model outside of Climate Interactive and the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative. 

Youth participation at international climate negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has steadily grown. YOUNGO, the official children and youth constituency to the UNFCCC, has done organized efforts to push for more ambitious climate policy since 2009. In this lecture active members of YOUNGO will talk about YOUNGO as a constituency, achievements as well as challenges and how to lobby for change. 

1. Ben Santhouse-James 

Ben Santhouse-James is Energy Contact Point at YOUNGO, the UNFCCC Youth Constituency, and works with a broad range of non-profits and youth climate organisations to promote systems thinking and interdisciplinary approaches to solving the climate crisis. He has been involved with YOUNGO for three years, previously serving on the Global Coordination Team and leading the COP27 and COP26 Energy and Sustainable Consumption & Production Global Youth Statements respectively. He holds an MSc in Energy Systems from the University of Oxford, where his research focused on carbon removals, and a BSc in Earth Science (Geophysics) from Imperial College London. In his day job, Ben works as a Sustainability Consultant at McKinsey & Company across sustainable finance, carbon management, and climate tech, and has previous work experience in environmental policy and growth capital investing across energy transition and circular economy assets.

2. Clara Von Glasow

Clara (28) is a German law graduate who has been an active member of YOUNGO since 2017. She served as the YOUNGO Global Focal Point in 2018 and since then has joined YOUNGO´s Global Coordination Team. Within YOUNGO she focusses on facilitating processes within the constituency and Capacity-Building for youth participation at UNFCCC conferences. In 2019 she sailed across the Atlantic with a group of youth activists to attend a climate conference in Latin America. Since then she has been organizing participation of Latin American youth at international climate conferences through scholarship programs. (last two sentences can be deleted if necessary)

3. Saher Rashid Baig

Youth advocate for Climate Justice, Human Rights and Child Rights Policy | Current Contact Point of the Cities Working Group and Former Contact Point of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) and Human Rights Working Group – YOUNGO; Official Children and Youth Constituency to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) | Stockholm+50 Youth Task Force member on behalf of Sustainable Communities (SDG11) Constituency.

Only ONLINE via Zoom

In order to address the climate and ecological crisis, we need to reduce our material consumption, is lecture will show how the lessons of wellbeing research and the lived experience of happily modest consumers can help us to prioritise what is really important in life. 

Dr. Teresa Belton studied Art History at the University of East Anglia 1971-1974, during which time she was a founder member of the UEA Eco-action Group. Later, she worked in a theatre, in community learning development, and undertook doctoral work into the influence of television on children’s story-making, leading to work as an educational researcher.  She is the author of Happier People Healthier Planet: How putting wellbeing first would help sustain life on Earth   http://happierpeoplehealthierplanet.com 

In our workshop, we use simple calculations to get to the bottom of the following questions:

What is the difference between terawatts and terawatt-hours?

How much energy do I need? How much can I take out of the earth?

How can I estimate my carbon footprint?

What measures can I take, what measures must society and business take to ensure the freedom of future generations?

 Psyche and Physis are ancient Greek words that  are connected to the relationship between cognition of self dimension and environment. Climate change today is unexpectedly connecting this two concepts under a psychological condition related to the perception of an environmental phenomenon: ecoanxiety. How it can be framed into a renewed vision of human health connected to environment? This is particularly true for young generations that are more senstitive and affected by ecoanxiety, in a sort of evolutive trend being the world citizen of tomorrow.

Domenico Vito, PhD Bio-engineer, worked as Researcher at the Metabolism of Cities Living Lab San Diego State University, observer of  Conferences of the Parties since 2015 , Member of the Italian Society of Climate Sciences (SISC), Youtuber HubZine Italia for dissemination on international negotiations and organizer of the Climate Change Symposiums and Climate Social Forum. Since September 2021 he is co-coordinator and member of the scientific committee of the International Conference One Health Conference.

 Paul Cockshott is a Computer Scientist and Marxist Economist. His CS research has covered special purpose machines, 3D TV studios, programming languages and video compression. In Economics he has done work on value theory, the foundations of historical materialism and the operation  of planned economy.

Now retired from paid work he writes and lectures online. He previously worked in the Computer Industry and as an academic at various Scottish Universities. His two most recent books were  How the World Works  and  Economic Planning in an Age of Climate Crisis. 

In this lecture we will discuss about the #DigitalArt4Climate COP28 edition, systemic innovation for all of society climate action empowerment in the context of the UNFCCC, potentials of blockchain technology for menaingful and rewarding youth engagement in climate action and (micro) climate entrepreneurship, our citizens’ climate action app development efforts in the context of the EU INTERREG Central Europe project JET4CE, our experiences with the COP27 (and COP28) Digital Innovation pavilion. 

Miroslav Polzer is the founder and executive director at IAAI GloCha, a UN accredited social enterprise based in Klagenfurt/Austria which aims to get everyone, everywhere engaged in climate action with culture, technology and organizational innovation (including resource mobilization innovation). Miroslav Polzer is founder of the #DigitalArt4Climate program which engages global youth and global creative community in climate action with an art competition, blockchain technology (NFTs) based resource mobilization and related edutainment programs. Miroslav Polzer is also strategic director of the Climate Chain Coalition, which is the world’s leading network of organizations that work in the field of harnessing blockchain technology for enhanced multistakeholder climate action.

Climate scientists agree that the climate crisis poses an existential threat to humanity. Although this knowledge has now reached large parts of society, the collective climate protection measures taken are far from sufficient. What is holding back policy makers, society, and individuals from taking action? The talk will introduce various cognitive action barriers, such as the principle of cognitive dissonance, the bystander effect or the single action bias.

Clara Kühner studied psychology at LMU Munich (B. Sc.) and Bamberg University (M. Sc.). During this time, she held internships in various organizations in the fields of personal development and personnel selection. In 2022, she received her Ph.D. from the University of Leipzig, focusing on the connections between work and employee well-being.

The sociological perspective on the environment and environmentalism at environmental goals in the areas of agriculture, energy, mobility and climate change from a specific angle. Environmental problems are deeply rooted in industrial society. Yet these problems are perceived and interpreted differently by different actors – individuals, organisations and states. From the scientific study of the question of how societies deal with the natural environment, approaches to solving environmental problems can be critically and constructively questioned. 

Birgit Peuker, Berlin, studied and obtained her doctorate in sociology. Her work focuses on the sociology of the environment and technology. She has worked in various research projects at university and non-university research institutions. She is currently employed at the Robert Koch Institute.

Prof. Balensiefen studied law and philosophy at the university of Tübingen where he received his doctoral grade too. Since more than two decades he practices as a Professor of Environmental, Building and Planning Law at the University of Applied Sciences in Biberach. There he established several years ago a climate protection management and a climate protection concept for the University in the program of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment “National Climate Initiative” (https://www.hochschule-biberach.de/campusklimaneutral).

Ottmar Edenhofer is director and chief economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and director of the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC). Furthermore, he is professor at the Technical University of Berlin and considered one of the world’s leading experts on the economics of climate change. His memberships include, among others, the German Academy of Science and Engineering acatech and the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. From 2008 to 2015, Ottmar Edenhofer served as Co-Chair of Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Edenhofer’s scientific expertise is sought by policy and international organizations likewise. He has published articles in a number of peer-reviewed journals and authored a number of books. The fourth year in a row, Ottmar Edenhofer belongs to the 1% of the most cited scientists worldwide in the category “interdisciplinary science” according to the Web of Science citation index.