Shared Session with Hochschule München University of Applied Sciences

Did you know that everyone has a strong impact on “Life below water” and our marine ecosystems, even though we here in Bavaria live so far away from the ocean? Do you want to learn how and why we need to act now for our oceans and marine life? Then join this lecture by Frank Schweikert, Founder and Director of the German Ocean Foundation. He will explain how the daily work of the institutions he is involved in contribute to a meaningful status improvement of the world’s largest ecosystem – the ocean. Although we humans depend on a healthy ocean to survive on planet Earth and the ocean is connected to all our rivers, we nearly know nothing about it. So, let’s dive into this amazing and still unknown ecosystem, allow ourselves to be inspired to change how we think, act, and feel about the ocean, and learn how we, even as students, can sustainably impact the future of “Life below water”.

Frank Schweikert is the founder and director of the German Ocean Foundation, President of the German Marine Litter Association, and Vice President of the German Society for Marine Research. He is the founder of Hamburg Climate Week (since 2009) and an associated member of the German branch CLUB OF ROME and ALDEBARAN Marine Research and Broadcast. He was a member of the European Union Assembly Mission Board “Climate Change Adaptation, including Societal Transformation” (2019-2022) and an honorary member of the Rotary Club Passport ECO Planet. He studied Biology with a diploma at the Universities of Stuttgart and Munich.

Countries are not on track to meet the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that comprises 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets to be achieved by 2030. Although SDGs aim to shift the world onto a sustainable and resilient path, countries are not yet able to make transformative changes for long-term sustainability that require building social prosperity and foundations within planetary boundaries. Failing to achieve SDGs will negatively affect billions of people and worsen environmental conditions and socio-economic problems. Therefore, BeyondSDG aims to understand the necessary conditions for long-term sustainability, including achieving SDGs, based on the following specific objectives:

1. identify critical targets for prioritizing SDGs;
2. investigate the effects of (under)achieving SDGs on long-term sustainability beyond 2030; and
3. identify sustainability targets for the post-2030 development agenda. For this, BeyondSDG applies a threefold scientific approach that combines statistical analysis of empirical and modelled data, qualitative analysis of literature, and knowledge co-creation with stakeholders, including sectoral experts and policymakers, based on systems thinking.

This combination of three approaches is complementary and essential to deal with the complex topic of long-term sustainability.

Prajal Pradhan, an Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen, studied agricultural engineering and environmental management. He has received the ERC Starting Grant 2022. Prajal was a lead author of the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land. He has experience designing relevant research on sustainable development, climate change, and food systems. His current research focuses on understanding the necessary conditions for long-term sustainability, including achieving SDGs, urban transformations, and climate resilience. He is also a Visiting Scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

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What does it take to use our economy as a lever to shape the sustainable transformation? And why are we still working with paradigms that are outdated? The talk will give an overview of future needs and obstacles on the way. How can we shape our economy to operate within planetary boundaries? And how do we need to shift our way of thinking about things?

Antonia is advocating for a regenerative and just new economic thinking. She is currently studying the M.A. Responsibility in Science, Engineering and Technology at TU Munich, working at the sustainability consultancy Agentur2020. Furthermore, she is a fellow and coach at the think-tank CRITICAL FRIENDS, where they actively want to create a beautiful economy.

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What has been achieved in efforts to address climate change in past Conference of the Parties (COPs) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and what can be expected from COP29 in Azerbaijan. Are we making progress? What are the big hurdles that need to be overcome? How might political developments impact on climate change progress? This talk will provide a broad overview of major trends in climate policy.

Prof. Miranda Schreurs (PhD University of Michigan) is Chair of Climate and Environmental Policy at the Bavarian School of Public Policy, Technical University of Munich. She investigates environmental movements, green politics, and climate policy making both comparatively and internationally. She has lived and researched in Europe, the United States and Asia. She also specializes on the politics surrounding the disposal of highly radioactive waste. In 2011, Prof. Schreurs was appointed by Chancellor Angela Merkel as a member of the Ethics Committee for a Secure Energy Supply. In 2016, she was appointed by the German Bundestag as a member of a committee established to bring citizens’ voices and ensure greater transparency in the search for a disposal site for highly radioactive waste. She was a member of the German Council on the Environment (2008-2016) and served both as Vice Chair and Chair of the European Advisory Council on Environment and Sustainable Development. She was a Fulbright Fellow to Japan and Germany and spent three years studying at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She also worked as a professor of comparative politics at the University of Maryland. From 2007 to 2016 she was Director of the Environmental Policy Research Center and Professor of Comparative Policy at the Free University of Berlin.

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Women worldwide face significantly more barriers to becoming entrepreneurs or employees compared to men. The latest Women, Business, and the Law report offers a comprehensive picture of the obstacles that women face in entering the global workforce and contributing to greater prosperity – for themselves, their families, and their communities. It expands the scope of its analysis, adding two indicators that can be critical in opening up or restricting women’s options: safety from violence and access to childcare services. When those measures are included, women on average enjoy just 64% of the legal protections that men do – far fewer than the previous estimate of 77%.

Women, Business and the Law is a World Bank Group project collecting data on the laws and policy mechanisms that measure the enabling environment for women’s economic opportunity. Women, Business and the Law 2024 introduces a new framework with three pillars – legal frameworks, supportive frameworks, and expert opinions – to measure the differences on access to economic opportunities between men and women in 190 economies. Adopting laws that strengthen women’s rights and opportunities is an essential first step toward inclusive, resilient, stronger societies. Equal treatment of women under the law is associated with more women entering and remaining in the labor force and rising to managerial positions. It generates higher wages for women and facilitates business ownership by women.

The analysis reveals a shocking implementation gap. Although laws on the books imply that women enjoy roughly two-thirds the rights of men, countries on average have established less than 40% of the systems needed for full implementation. For example, 98 economies have enacted legislation mandating equal pay for women for work of equal value. Yet only 35 economies – fewer than one out of every five – have adopted pay-transparency measures or enforcement mechanisms to address the pay gap. Even in high-income countries with high scores for treating women equally under the law, the implementation of these laws is lacking.

Daniela Behr is an Economist at the Women, Business and the Law project at the World Bank. She currently leads the team’s research efforts on women’s legal capacity regarding property rights, financial inclusion, and entrepreneurship. Daniela has worked in various capacities at the World Bank Group since 2018 co-leading a research project on affordable housing, conducting impact assessments of IFC’s investments in financial institutions, and working on indicator development related to agribusiness regulations. Prior to joining the World Bank Group, Daniela was a research fellow at University of Konstanz and George Washington University and a human rights and gender specialist with the German Development Cooperation (GIZ) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Daniela studied in Konstanz, Madrid, and Toronto and holds a PhD in political economy from the University of Konstanz.

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A healthy ocean is essential to global well-being, biodiversity, and includes critical ecosystems underpinning all life on earth. Despite its values, the ocean is under immense pressure from human activities, threatening its ability to support human well-being, with disproportionate impacts on vulnerable communities. The majority of these pressures come from economic activities related to the ocean (“ocean economy”) such as fishing, aquaculture, coastal development, and shipping. Globally the ocean economy is worth over $4t AUD/yr and is expanding at twice the rate of the mainstream economy. At the same time, the gap in funding to protect and manage ocean health is at least $266b AUD/year and growing rapidly. Not only does this put the future of the ocean at risk, it also risks the entire global economy: over two-thirds of all publicly listed companies are at risk due to ocean decline.

Investing a sustainable ocean economy (SOE) however can reduce economic losses by $8t AUD by 2037, yield six times more food and create 12 million new jobs by 2030. In a SOE, ocean health and ocean wealth are held in balance, and sufficient and durable finance for the management of ocean health is provided from the SOE. Despite clear evidence that achieving SOE will be better economically, ecologically and socially, market barriers hinder the transition. Key market barriers include inadequate policies, funding, capacities, and pipelines of investable SOE deals.

This talk will dive into the global efforts to align capital flows with SDG 14.

Dr. Dennis Fritsch is focusing on ocean finance and the blue economy at Minderoo Foundation. Previously, he led the United Nations’ Sustainable Blue Economy Finance Initiative, bringing together banks, insurers, and investors to align their activities with a sustainable ocean economy and SDG 14 – Life Below Water. Before, he established the research department at Responsible Investor, focusing on investor perspectives on Blue Economy and biodiversity. He further supported the European Commission’s BlueInvest Fund and BLUE Marine Foundation, alongside being selected as a Protect.Blue Wavemaker 2023 and for the pool of experts to contribute to the UN’s 3rd World Ocean Assessment (WOA III).

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SDG 16: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.   

What does this mean when we talk about crimes, their victims, the perpetrators and incarceration? What about our “habits and traditions” of “punishing the offender” by taking the conflict away from the victim – and partly from “society” – by simply sending people behind the bars of prison? What can we do to restore justice? And what about sustainability, when up to 70% of prisoners relapse into crime within the first five years of their release? What do we do with national conflicts and their consequences that are often and quickly referred to as “peace”, as in Colombia?

Let’s explore together the concepts of:

• Restorative Justice as a new paradigm for the old problem of “stolen conflict”, 
• the challenges of “peace building” and the gap between personal trauma counseling and public restoration, 
• the role of NGOs in failing states and challenged societies as actors for peace, freedom and sustainability, and 
• the opportunities for students to design, create and produce opportunities for change in an “en detail” example: 
• Rethinking ‘Prison and Corrections’: a new generation of greener, more inclusive and sustainable prisons.

Ulrich Weinhold is a development expert with three decades of professional experience. After studying law in Germany and the USA, he worked as a lawyer at the renowned Bavarian law firm Rödl & Partner. After his appointment in international development work, he worked in development projects in the post-war area of Eastern Congo in the reconstruction of a hospital and in the “Golden Triangle” between Northern Laos, China, and Myanmar in the fight against drug cultivation and trafficking with high-quality silk projects for the tribal community in the mountains. After disaster management in the Asian region following the 2004 tsunami, he took over the management of a Christian organization for relief and development work funded by the “BMZ”, which works in more than 80 countries with around 260 employees, often in “failed states” and in civil war or post-war situations. With his experience in Colombian post-crisis management, he was invited to work at Seehaus e.V., a free-form prison, as a restorative justice agent with a special focus on victims’ rights. He is a certified mediator in criminal matters. In addition, he is an in-house lawyer there and maintains his own law firm for international contracts, supply chains, and organizational development.

Recommending lifelong learning himself, he holds master’s degrees from the Catholic University of Freiburg in organizational management and the Bonn HBRS University with a thesis on sustainability measures in supply chains at the Schwarz Group (LIDL, Kaufland, PreZero). He teaches youth law in various institutions and is often invited to speak about justice, healing, and responsibility.

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Countless individuals globally endure ongoing conflict and preventable illnesses, particularly impacting the most vulnerable, such as infants and children. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medicals undertake courageous missions in these regions, striving to save lives and improve healthcare conditions. One of these doctors is Monika Ried. In the lecture, she’ll talk about her experiences in Yemen, Iraq, and Nigeria, where she and her colleagues helped people hurt by war, provided care for Yazidi refugees who suffered under genocide, and fought against diseases like Diphtheria. Let’s hear about how she and the team from MSF are helping in places without stable government, supporting their colleagues in tough situations, saving patients, and trying to find ways to stop poverty and unfairness.

Monika Ried is a medical doctor, who specialized in internal medicine and intensive care. Currently, she’s working in München Bogenhausen in an interdisciplinary Intensive care unit. Within her engagement in “Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)” [engl. “doctors without borders”, dt. “Ärzte ohne Grenzen”], she was sent 9 months to Yemen in 2018 for her first mission. There, Monika Ried worked in the emergency room, where she nurtured war-wounded people and cared for babies and children with severe malnutrition or almost forgotten infectious diseases like tetanus or diphtheria. In 2020/21 Monika Ried was sent to north Iraq to support a hospital, especially for the Yazidi refugees who underwent genocide by the IS. Last year she went to Nigeria on an emergency mission as a medical team leader.

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