Lectures

Watch videos from the Sustainability Lecture Series featuring prominent speakers discussing the sustainability challenges and solutions facing society.

George Marshall: How do we communicate climate change?

How can we better engage in conversations about climate change? How do we communicate the serious topic to all kinds of people – and in a way so that they actually care?

The Natural History Museum forms the backdrop for this lecture by George Marshall, founder of Climate Outreach and a leading advisor on climate change communication. The lecture is followed by a conversation moderated by Jarl Krausing, International Director of CONCITO, Denmark's green think tank.

The event was held in 2023 in collaboration with CONCITO.

Kate Raworth: Doughnut Economics - reinventing the shape of progress

Kate Raworth's Doughnut offers a vision of what it means for humanity to thrive in the 21st century – and Doughnut Economics explores the mindset and ways of thinking needed to get us there.

Experience Kate Raworth and Professor Katherine Richardson in a 2022 conversation about how communities all over the world are already transforming the dynamics of their local economies to become more distributive and regenerative.

Connie Hedegaard & Dan Esty: How can global action on climate change be accelerated? Reflections from an American and European perspective

The global emissions of greenhouse gases were higher in 2021 than ever before and the sixth assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) tells us that the problem is ever clearer and urgent. American and European actors have to work together, learn from each other, and push forces to address this crisis fast enough.

In this 2022 lecture, Dan Esty, Professor of Environmental Law and Policy at Yale Law School, joins Connie Hedegaard, former EU Commissioner for Climate Action and Danish Minister. They discuss externalities, what it takes to get to net-zero emissions, incentives for change and the policies behind.

Timothy Carter: Green roofs, urban waterways, and higher education

In this 2021 lecture, Dr. Timothy Carter talks about how the many types of environmentally relevant infrastructure in society play a key role in how systems function – physical, social, cultural and others. By definition, however, these infrastructures are hidden, and most people either ignore, or take for granted, the functions that they perform. With three different case studies at increasing scales, Dr. Carter describes how these infrastructures can be used to accelerate change.

Sabrina Fernandes: Between guns and soy: Jair Bolsonaro's authoritarianism in Brazil

In this lecture, Sabrina Fernandes (a Brazilian sociologist and eco-socialist activist) talks about the current situation in Brazil. The country has undergone great political turmoil – from the coup against Dilma Rousseff to the wrongful conviction of Lula to the election of the far-right Jair Bolsonaro.

The lecture took place on 5 October 2021 and was hosted by the Sustainability Science Centre and the Centre for Latin American Studies (CLAS) at the University of Copenhagen. Georg Walter, Director of CLAS, moderated the event.

Emotional responses to the climate crisis: anxiety, anger and action

This webinar is about emotional responses to the climate crisis: why you may feel anxiety and anger, how to deal with these emotions, and how to turn them into action.

The webinar is a dialogue between a political scientist, a social and community psychologist, and a natural scientist.

Speakers

• Lars Tønder, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen
• Zoe Leviston, College of Health & Medicine, Australian National University
• Katherine Richardson, Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen.

The webinar took place on 31 May 2021 and was hosted by the Sustainability Science Centre, as part of the Sustainability Lecture Series, and the Globe Institute, as part of their Sustainability Initiative.

Watch the recording of the webinar on the Globe Institute's YouTube channel

How to reconcile digitalisation & environmental protection?

The COVID-19 pandemic increased the penetration of already existing digitalisation capabilities into numerous services. Unfortunately, digitalisation of services also comes with environmental costs: power and energy consumption, use of resources, new products and materials to recycle.

What kind of solutions and best practices already exist that can reconcile digitalisation and environmental concerns? How can we make the digital sector more respectful of our planet? And how can digital development serve environmental protection? In this webinar, French and Danish experts and entrepreneurs present their findings and innovative solutions.

The webinar was organised by the Sustainability Science Centre, as part of the Sustainability Lecture Series, and by the French Institute of Denmark, as part of Digital November, with support from Institut Français in Paris. It took place on 25 November 2020 and was moderated by Professor Katherine Richardson, with an introduction by Caroline Ferrari, French Ambassador to Denmark.

Speakers

• Laura Brimont, coordinator, Ways of life in transition at Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI), France: How to turn the digital transition into an accelerator for the ecological transition
  Read Laura Brimont's White Paper on the Digital Economy and Environment on IDDRI's website
• Romain Rouvoy, professor at Lille University – Université de Lille and project member of "Spirals" at the National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria), France: How can the digital industry become more respectful of the environment?
• Olivier Corradi, founder and leader of Tomorrow, member of La French Tech Nordics, Denmark: Digital solutions to support the ecological transition.
• Christian Igel, professor at the Department of Computer Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and François Bernard Lauze, associate professor at the Department of Computer Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Olivier De Schutter: The Enabling State: Building the Ecological Transition on Social Innovations

The societal transformation required to remain within the planetary boundaries requires changes at multiple levels, in various sectors of society and in a variety of contexts. Accelerating collective learning through local experimentation in social innovations shall be essential to that effect. To support this, we need an Enabling State: a form of government that could empower local communities to experiment with new ways of producing, consuming or sharing. In this way, we can win the race against the degradation of the ecosystems. While the Welfare State, in its classic insurance and redistributive functions, remains essential to the ecological transition, it should now combine these functions with that of supporting social experimentation.

Olivier De Schutter (LL.M., Harvard University; PhD, University of Louvain (UCL)), is the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights and the former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food (2008-2014). He is a professor at UCLouvain and Sciences Po. He has also previously taught at Columbia University, Yale University and UC Berkeley and was awarded the Francqui Prize – Belgium's most prestigious scientific award – for his work at the intersection of human rights and governance. He chairs the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food).

The webinar took place on 30 October 2020 and was moderated by Katherine Richardson, Professor of Biological Oceanography and Head of the Sustainability Science Centre.

Read more on the topic in Oliver De Schutter's report from the UN General Assembly (PDF)

Sustainability science and activism: prospects and approaches to a global crisis

2019 saw a flurry of grassroots movements pop up around the world – including in Denmark – as a consequence of the growing global climate and biodiversity crises. This event features a mixed panel of world-renowned academics involved in sustainability science in conversation with representatives of activist groups that have emerged as key drivers of the movement to bring attention to these crises in Denmark: Fridays For Future Denmark, Extinction Rebellion Denmark and The Green Student Movement (Den Grønne Studenterbevægelse).

The event aimed to answer a variety of questions about sustainability science and activism:

• What are the different approaches to activism that have popped up in the last few years? How do these groups operate, and what are their motivations?
• What role should scientists and academics play as the crisis unfolds? Should they be only seen as knowledge-providers, or as active supporters of these causes?
• How can we better engage with the public citizenry, in order to better divulge facts and prospects about the consequences of these crises?

Speakers

• Katherine Richardson, Professor of Biological Oceanography and Head of the Sustainability Science Centre at the University of Copenhagen
• Jens Friis Lund, Professor of Political Ecology at the Department of Food and Resource Economics at the University of Copenhagen
• Caroline Bessermann, representing The Green Student Movement
• Tiem van der Deure, representing Extinction Rebellion Denmark.

Moderators

• Michael Krabbe Borregaard, associate professor, Globe Institute
• Luisa dos Santos Bay Nielsen, research assistant, Globe Institute.

The webinar took place on 28 April 2020 and was hosted by the Sustainability Science Centre, as part of the Sustainability Lecture Series, and the Globe Institute, as part of their Sustainability Initiative.

Watch the recording of the webinar on the Globe Institute's YouTube channel

Previous lectures

Watch more sustainability lectures on the University’s video portal