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By Prof. Dr. Jakob Rhyner, Scientific Director of the Bonn Alliance, November 2019
The Bonn Alliance for Sustainability Research was founded on 15 November 2017 by six research and education institutions in Bonn: Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies (BICC), the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), the Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, University of Applied Sciences (H-BRS), the Institute for Environment and Human Security of the United Nations University (UNU-EHS) and the University of Bonn including the Center for Development Research (ZEF).
The Bonn Alliance aims to further strengthen research in the field of sustainable development and global change. It stands for a transdisciplinary approach to sustainability research. Sustainability research should take place in a direct exchange and dialogue with policy makers and stakeholders from economy and civil society on local and global levels.
As a platform for research towards a sustainable future, the Bonn Alliance has established the Innovation Campus Bonn (ICB). Actors with diverse backgrounds are invited to introduce their ideas, their expert knowledge and perspectives and work together on sustainability topics of mutual interest and relevance. The ICB will focus on three priority areas: Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence, Mobility and Migration, and Bioeconomy.
The Bonn Alliance for Sustainability Research/ Innovation Campus Bonn (ICB) is generously funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the German State of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence
Digitalization and artificial intelligence (AI) will fundamentally change the world economy and international division of labor as well as society, politics, orders, people’s thinking and their working world in the coming decades. The connections between digitalization, AI and sustainability are characterized above all by considerable uncertainties, high rates of change, large knowledge deficits and manifold design challenges. The SDGs of the 2030 Agenda have not anticipated the dynamics and the profound processes of change resulting from digitalization and AI, but only sometimes mention the opportunities of “information and communication technologies” and digital inequality. This is the starting point for Sustainability Research in Bonn.
The two-year project digitainable, funded by Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), started in July 2019. In this project we will investigate the impact of digitalization and artificial intelligence considering its influence on the more than two hundred indicators associated with the UN Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).Read more
Mobility and Migration
Contemporary society is characterized by increasing mobility as geographical movement as well as within social dimensions. Classical causes for migration are conflicts, economic crises and changes, disasters and presumably in the future climate-induced environmental changes. However, a second important dimension of mobility is social mobility, not only in vertical terms (social advancement), but also in lateral terms, as an ordinary professional life becomes more and more diverse. Scientific and technical advances which fundamentally change social orders and offer humankind radically new possibilities with regard to its geographical and social mobility will also challenge this kind of mobility.
These diverse interactions between dimensions of mobility, but also with scientific and technological developments, have so far been the subject of too little or no sustainability research. Social and spatial mobility are important prerequisites for the creation of sustainability in direct correspondence with almost all SDG objectives. Read more
Bioeconomy
The future of humankind will depend to a large extent on reliable and secure access to food and the sustainable use of energy, water and raw materials. In view of climate change and dwindling resources, renewable sources and their basis play a central role. The 2030 Agenda and the Paris Climate Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will only be achievable by overcoming the current use of resources. Population growth, increasing food requirements and environmental pollution are leading to central conflicts of objectives for sustainable development with regard to higher living standards, limited arable land with increasing soil degradation, shrinking water supplies and the loss of biodiversity.
Bioeconomy is searching for solutions to these challenges and conflicting goals. Humans and nature must be reconciled. Bioeconomy is a core concept of transformation. With its National Research Strategy Bioeconomy, Germany took on a global leadership role in the bioeconomy policy in 2010. According to the recommendations of the German government’s HighTech Forum 2017, bioeconomy is placed among the six most important topics of the future. The concept of bioeconomy has gained political momentum and importance worldwide over the past ten years. More than 50 countries have anchored bioeconomy in their policies since 2005. Read more
Head Office Bonn Alliance for Sustainability Research
