A sustainable future for Europe

Sustainability is just one of many areas where frontier research can make a real difference: From healthy lives to sustainable cities, from food security to equal societies. This event will be an occasion for scientists and policy-makers to discuss how frontier research can help tackle some of the biggest sustainability challenges facing European citizens. Some ERC grantees will share their exciting findings on renewable energies, biodiversity threats, demographic change and the medicine of the future.

Lutz is one of the invited speakers at this event. During his career he has received two Advanced Grants by the European Research Council (ERC). In 2009, Lutz received funding for 5 years to study "Forecasting Societies Adaptive Capacities to Climate Change” (FutureSoc). This project is devoted to determining how the changes that societies are likely to undergo over the next several decades will affect their vulnerability to a climate that is more extreme than it is today. FutureSoc research used a multidisciplinary approach to test the central hypothesis and presents empirical evidence from different societies based on analyses of various data sources from individual- and household level data, village-level studies, and national case studies to global-level time series analysis. The results are relevant to the formulation of national and international development priorities.

The second grant was awarded to Lutz in 2017 for the project titled "The Demography of Sustainable Human Wellbeing" (EmpoweredLifeYears). The ongoing project studies the demography of sustainable human wellbeing. The project aims to make an unconventional cross-disciplinary contribution to advancing the discussion around and search for broadly acceptable and empirically measurable quantitative indicators of socioeconomic progress and long-term human well-being that can serve as criteria for judging sustainable development. 

Lutz will present the highlights of both projects at this event.

The event is by invitation but it will be webstreamed on the ERC website.

Last edited: 04 December 2019