The Bonn Alliance Head Office supports interested colleagues from partner institutions in bundling their contributions on the topic of sustainability „after 2030“ under a common umbrella, discussing them with each other and communicating them to a larger audience.
The 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are widely recognised as a major policy achievement of the international community, which has done much to include diverse voices and galvanize the global sustainability discourse. However, the 2030 Agenda also faces criticisms, such as its being dominated by “Northern” and “Western” paradigms, resulting in concerns about insufficient inclusion of other worldviews and approaches. This is where science needs to play a bigger role.
‘Sustainability’ as a working area is structured by concrete problem settings, and thus requires an understanding beyond historically developed disciplinary boundaries, of epistemologies and ontologies, and an operation within a scientific multilingualism. Academia needs to integrate diverse cultural, religious and philosophical perspectives into the discourse, and help to negotiate between concepts and views, navigating in the same value-laden environment as policy and decision makers.
Founded in 2017, the Bonn Alliance aims to bundle resources and expertise to address overarching issues and challenges of our time. This is the commitment we are addressing with the newly established programme line “Sustainability – Looking beyond 2030” (S-LB2030). Bonn Alliance partners can bring existing events and formats to the programme line as well as organise events and formats independently of existing projects and explore new paths.
One new path being embarked on is the formation of the working group on “Alternative Sustainabilities” anchored at the University of Bonn/ TRA6. The aim of the group is to bring into dialogue diverse conceptualisations, imaginaries and practices of sustainability in the Global South and the Global North and thereby critically rethink sustainability and its current modes of implementations. Going beyond mainstream sustainability discourses and programmes, the working group wants to develop new ways of theorizing and approaching ‘alternative sustainabilities’, building on its members’ diverse regional expertise and empirical research in Asia, the Americas and Africa. The group welcomes different perspectives on the topic and is open to a diverse group of people from all disciplines, sectors and (research) institutions.
More on the programme line website.
Contact: Dr. Sandra Gilgan, Managing Director of the Bonn Alliance for Sustainability Research, s.gilgan@uni-bonn.de
