This optional survey aims to foster joint-up thinking and to collectively identify key priorities and opportunities for trans- and interdisciplinary approaches in the Earth System Governance community. Results will feed into the Nijmegen Agenda for Transformative Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity in Earth System Governance.

Click here for further details.

During this walk through Nijmegen, famous podcast duo Jozien Wijkhuijs and Dennis Gaens take you on an exciting journey. Through an audio story you travel to a Nijmegen after the great wave. What does that future look like? A fictional story about our city in 200 years. Are you joining? Bring a smart phone and headset. This audio story was made for the Art for climate festival Nimma aan zee.

Addressing the climate and biodiversity crises as a challenge of imagination, arthouse LUX endeavors, through this festival, to confront these issues using the transformative force of art. (Please note that the walk may involve stairs in the city center!)

Registration

Register for the event here.

On October 24th, during the opening plenary of the Radboud Conference on Earth System Governance, the following keynote presenters will delve into the conference theme: “Bridging Sciences and Societies for Sustainability Transformations”, highlighting the need for sustainability transformations and showing how fundamental such transformations need to be.

Marjan Minnesma

Urgent action is much more needed and is also possible. Science and society can be more aligned and help each other in pushing government and business. Concrete examples show how we start with concrete and scalable projects, and show that the energy transition should not deteriorate biodiversity, but that climate and biodiversity should both be taken into account when implementing solutions.

Website: www.urgenda.nl

Melanie Challenger – The Who, How, When, and Why of including the voices of other species in human decision-making processes

Today, it is widely accepted among scientists and non-scientists that many nonhuman animals are intelligent, sentient, communicative, and agentive. And yet there is no provision to include their voices as subjects of justice within human decision-making contexts. The need for more inclusive forms of deliberation will become ever more necessary as the interests of humans and nonhumans come into conflict, and in a changing world and environment.

But how, when and why should we consider other species in our legal and political spheres? The commonest approaches today are in the Rights of Nature movements, which attempt to represent other beings in aggregate or to safeguard whole landscapes, and in projects like Animals in the Room, which regard the other animals in our midst as individuals capable of communicating their interests. The question for human societies is not can the other beings around us express their interests, but can we listen?

Matthias Schmelzer – Contesting the growthocene: From capitalist realism to ecological reduction

Economic growth isn’t working, and it cannot be made to work. This keynote argues that the ideology of growth conceals the rising inequalities and ecological destructions associated with capitalism, and points to desirable alternatives to it. Contemporary society is held captive by the hegemony of growth. Even proposals for ecological modernization, Green New Deals or post-capitalism base their utopian hopes on the development of productive forces, on redistributing the fruits of economic growth and technological progress. Yet growing evidence shows that continued economic growth cannot be made compatible with sustaining life and is not necessary for a good life for all. Building on a vibrant field of research, the lecture presents analysis of capitalist realism around the growth paradigm, introduces the most important critiques of economic growth, and discusses ways of transforming economy and society beyond growth. Proposals for degrowth, it argues, offer a way to step off the treadmill of an alienating, expansionist, and hierarchical system and create new avenues for sustainability beyond growth.

In a not too distant future without animals and plants where the price of human survival is high, a young man breaks every rule to save his wife.

An animated feature film by TIBOR BÁNÓCZKI & SAROLTA SZABÓ (whiteplasticsky.com)

Registration

Register for the event here.

Registration

Register for the event via this form.

The session takes the form of a fishbowl dialogue, allowing exchange between listeners in an ‘outer circle’, and a smaller group of speakers in the ‘inner circle’. We would like to hear from the audience, who can feel free to elect themselves as a discussant!

• Jeanne Nel (Wageningen University & Research – specialized in Transformative change for biodiversity)

• Sylvia Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen – Governing value shifts in public policy (TRANSPATH)
• Kaisa Korhonen-Kurki – Engaging with values and learning across science, policy and society interfaces (BioAgora)
• Rosalie van Dam – Marginalized groups, identities and perspectives in value-oriented governance (BioTraCes)
• Verina Ingram – Governing plural values in value chains (TC4BE)

Come play in this pilot of Scenario Sessions where we will experiment and experience new forms of democratic decision-making, based on artistic inputs from theatre.
New inputs for decision-making are needed as our current democracies are not sufficiently capable to deal with major social challenges such as the climate and biodiversity crisis.
Scenario sessions is a participatory method in which information is being collected out of the polyphony within a topic. Then this information is translated into a desirable scenario. This method is strongly based on the theatrical principles of pre-enactment. Pre-enactment can be seen as a theatrical rehearsal that enables people to interact with what may happen in the future. In this way we not only relate cognitively to this future scenario, but we can consciously feel and realistically experience what it means to move into that future; what questions does it raise, what possible problems will arise, what interests will clash?
By playing different roles in relation to the issue, polyphony becomes an important value in democratic decision-making. Not only human parties are given a voice, but also for instance the wind, the water and the soil play a role in the pre-enactment.
The pre-enactment movement sees democracy as a rehearsal stage, a space in which the spectator (participant) acts as the author or shaper of decision-making for the future.

Registration

Register for the event via this form.

Click here for further details.

The Ooijpolder is a rural area adjacent to the city of Nijmegen, between the hills and river Waal. This area is an example of three types of biodiversity restoration: rewilding, flower-rich dikes and landscape restoration in the agricultural landscapes. Radboud University collaborates with several partners from this area in a Living Lab to understand the ecological gains of these types of restoration and its socio-economic drivers. This walking tour starts under the Waalbrug (the bridge across the river Waal, in the city centre) and explores these three types of restoration and places these efforts in a broader societal context.

Registration

Register for the event via this form.

• Length: 5 km.
• We will walk on flat terrain with a high chance of muddy trails.
• Duration: 2-3 hours
• Date and time: 27 October 2023 | 10.00am to 1.00pm

Excursion starts under the Waalbrug (the bridge across the river Waal, in the city centre).

Click here for further details.

Click here for further details.

The food forest concept proposes an integration of forestry techniques and productive agriculture. The concept challenges the idea of separating agriculture from biodiversity by suggesting the application of knowledge intensive techniques can provide forest habitat and bountiful food production. One of the leading individuals in the movement to spread food forests is Ketelbroek in Groesbeek.
Our hosts Wouter van Eck and Pieter Jansen will lead the tour of the site and explain the movement. Come with questions!
More information available here.

Registration

Register for the event via this form.

Click here for further details.