12 March 2015 Palais Niederösterreich, Herrengasse 13, 1010 Vienna
Special Public Event: Towards a Sustainable Future
Vital decisions are taking place this year that will shape the future of our planet. Most notably, the world’s nations will set a global agenda for sustainable development by adopting the Sustainable Development Goals in September, and in December many hope our nations will agree a new global climate change treaty.
In this context, IIASA and partners hosted an evening event that presented the ecological status of today’s planet Earth and analyzed the options available to humanity to meet economic development goals within a safe operating space of a stable and resilient planet.
The event was hosted byProfessor Dr Pavel Kabat, Director General and CEO at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis; Professor Dr Jeffrey Sachs, Director at the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network; and Dr Franz Fischler, President at the European Forum Alpbach.
PUBLIC LECTURE
— Abundance within planetary boundaries
by Professor Dr Johan Rockström, Executive Director of Stockholm Resilience Centre. Click on more to read about the lecture and the speaker.
About the lecture: Three recent scientific insights define our future in the 21st century, and reformulate the way we define sustainable development and our opportunities for meeting human needs in this crucial year when the global community will set a new post 2015 agenda and a new climate change agreement. We have (1) become our own geological epoch, the Anthropocene, where humanity constitutes the largest force of change on the planet, (2) we now face rapidly rising risks of inducing tipping points that could disrupt the Earth system and modern civilisations with it, and (3) the fundamental insight that the Holocene, our “Edens garden” of environmental stability over past 10,700 years is our unique and desired planetary state, defining our biophysical safe operating space. Combining these three scientific insights with our ethical responsibility of sharing equitably the remaining ecological space on Earth and respecting the right to development for all citizens, means that the world must develop within a safe and just operating space of a stable and resilient planet. Interestingly, this is not only humanity’s new grand challenge but also a grand opportunity.
About the speaker: Johan Rockström is the Director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) and a Professor in Environmental Science with emphasis on water resources and global sustainability at Stockholm University. Professor Rockström is an internationally recognized scientist on global sustainability issues. He is one of the leading scientists within the science on planetary boundaries – an approach to human prosperity in the Anthropocene, as well as a leading scientist on global water resources and strategies to build resilience in water scarce regions of the world, Prof. Rockström has more than 15 years of experience of research on agriculture, water resources and ecosystem services. He has written over 100 research publications with more than 50 peer-reviewed scientific articles and several books in the fields of global environmental change; resilience and sustainability; agricultural water management; watershed hydrology; global water resources and food production; and eco-hydrology. Prof. Rockström has served as advisor to several governments, international policy processes and business networks, and has published several books and over 100 scientific articles. He chaired the design phase for Future Earth and currently chairs the Earth League, the EAT initiative, and the CGIAR program on Water, Land and Ecosystems.
by Professor Dr Jeffrey Sachs, followed by the launch of a new research project to scientifically accompany the implementation of the sustainable development goals, under the auspices of the Leadership Council of the UN SDSN and the Alpbach-Laxenburg Group with a video message by HE Sam K. Kutesa (President of the UN General Assembly).
The event also included a cultural intermezzo in which dancer/choreographer, Gloria Benedikt, will connect the Arts, Economics, and global challenges; a panel debate on Transitions to Sustainability and the Critical Year of 2015: from Vienna to Addis Ababa, New York and Paris; and finish with a reception.
