Chair of Sustainability Governance

Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources

Chair of Sustainability Governance

Abkürzung der Fakultät für Umwelt und Natürliche Ressourcen "unr" in der Farbe sand auf grünem, kreisförmigen Hintergrund

We are an interdisciplinary group of scholars working at the nexus of sustainability, science, and society. In our research and teaching, we combine approaches from Political Science, Sociology, Critical Geography, and Science & Technology Studies. We provide our students with skills in the critical analysis of sustainability issues. The English-language Master’s degree program “Environmental Governance” is one of the focal points of the courses on offer.

News

Confirmation of Project Funding

BMWK project “W-rob –
Robust implementation of heat planning” approved

Our team is delighted to have been awarded funding for the ‘W-rob’ project. Under the leadership of Philipp Späth, the project is developing solutions for the spatial, organisational and legal challenges involved in implementing municipal heat planning.

Successful FRIAS-Workshop

Special Issue project in
“Environment and Planning E”

The Special Issue “Mobilising and Contesting Law in Contemporary Socio-environmental Conflicts”, edited inter alia by Cristina Espinosa and Zabrina Welter, presents a series of context-specific empirical insights, while at the same time contributing to theory building in the interdisciplinary field of research on complex, power-laden relationships between law and human-environment interactions.

New Publication

First doctoral article by
Zabrina Welter published in “Environment and Security”

The article “Spatial repertoires of power in the production of mining territories in northern Cauca, Colombia: Between imposition and negotiation” examines the emergence of new mining territories from a relational perspective. Based on ethnographic research in Afro-Colombian territories, it shows that territorial appropriation is defined and transformed by everyday moments of imposition and negotiation between different actors with different levels of power.

Research

Our research focus and current projects.

Teaching

Our courses and information about theses.

Our Team

Introduction of our team members with short bios.

Future Forests

The Chair of Sustainability Governance is involved in the Cluster of Excellence application “Future Forests – Adapting Complex Social-ecological Forest Systems to Global Change”. Future Forests aims to analyse and develop adaptation and transformation pathways for forest-based social-ecological systems of the future. The contribution of social science research focuses on decision-making in the context of uncertainties and societal ambiguities regarding the protection and management of future forests.