Keynote and Panel Discussion
28 September 2017, by Tobias Wegener
The keynote speakers Prof. Dr. Jetta Frost, (Vice-President Universität Hamburg) and Prof. Dr. Alexander Bassen (Director of the Center for a Sustainable University, Universität Hamburg; German Council for Sustainable Development) presented their visions of how to strengthen network collaboration on sustainable development.
Prof. Dr. Bassen seized the opportunity to thank Dr. Claudia Schmitt, Christine Stecker, Wolfgang Denzler and Sophie Palm who organized the HSDS 2017 for their great job in preparing the very successful event.
Panel Discussion "Challenges for national and international networking on SD"
In the panel discussion there was a very active, involved and likewise critical audience discussing with the panel.
- Prof. Dr. Helga Kromp-Kolb, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Alliance of Sustainable Universities in Austria (Austria)
- Dr. Jana Dlouha, COPERNICUS Alliance, Charles University Prague (Czech Republic)
- Uwe Birkel, Associated expert at the Institute for Social Innovation, University of Applied Sciences Bonn Rhein Sieg, in the field of sustainable entrepreneurship education in developing countries; formerly representative of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in Madagascar (Germany)
- Svetlana Thaller-Honold, VDI Technologiezentrum (Germany) (instead of Eckart Lilienthal)
The discussion was determined by very different point of views. For example there was a call for scientific guiding principles which could and should be normative, because other stakeholders would build normative guidelines as well. Other claimed to that building networks matters, but first you have to find them and that this is the real challenge. And some people in the audience demanded for more and said what is happening now on sustainability discourse is not enough.
Text and Photos: Daniela Friedrich