Prof. Dr. Thomas Hickler
Senckenberg Biodiversität und Klima Forschungszentrum (BiK-F)
Sustainability in an age of global change: land use, climate change and the "Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services" (IPBES)
Our societies undergo extremely rapid transformations, primarily driven by the globalization of knowledge and techniques to use natural resources. These transformations have reached a scale at which humans have become an important driver of Earth system dynamics, including, e.g., the global fluxes of carbon and nitrogen, and climate change. In such a rapidly changing world, standing still is no option. We must constantly re-evaluate our strategies to cope with the grand challenges to our society. I will describe the global patterns of the on-going changes, focusing on land use and climate change, agricultural productivity and biodiversity loss. Regarding the latter, I will also present the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service (IPBES), a UN-based body similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). One conclusion is that rapid societal and technical transformations are necessary to prevent large-scale degradation of ecosystems, climate change beyond the level at which societies can adapt and human suffering, but also that the necessary transformations are feasible. Fossil fuels must be viewed as a bridge technology and, as such, have fuelled societal and technical developments that make it possible to create a fully sustainable world for 12 or more billion people.