Lecture series in Ecology and Environmental Research WS 2015/16

The New Story Movement and Sustainability

The Year 2015 has been declared the International Year of Soils by the United Nations: All over the globe in many small and large areas, we are killing our soils by the wide use of pesticides and herbicides. We can talk about a soil crisis, but it is really a crisis of civilization. It begins with the climate and the environmental crises – both have directly to do with us as people striving for sustainability. The economic crisis was brought on by the failure in the international money system; the hunger crisis really is a crisis of food costs. The nuclear catastrophes in the USA, Ukraine and Japan – by the way, mostly in ‘highly developed countries’ – have augmented the radiation and the air quality crises.

All these crises are killing our soils and us; they have a basis in the loss of human values in dominant societies – and the loss of culture, too. Our world seems to be mostly interested in exorbitant profits, which fires on consumerism and altogether brings us to plundering our planet and its sentient beings. This represents the OLD STORY and is behind the drive and motivation for change.

Solution: Our sustainability studies, permaculture practices and other worldwide ecological movements are part of the post-growth-civilization, which is emerging rapidly. We are in the process of creating the NEW STORY. This story - including protagonists, ideas and attitudes - will be told in my talk.

Declan Kennedy - About:

• Founding Chairman of Global Ecovillage Network (GEN)
• Founding Director of the Permaculture Institute of Europe (PIE)
• Former Professor of Urban Design at the Technical University, Berlin (TUB)

*** Invited by Hartmut Frank, Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology ***

• Announcement as PDF