2019

At the end of October, ZIN spokeswoman Prof'in Doris Fuchs, Agni Kalfagianni (Associate Professor at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, University of Utrecht, Netherlands) and Anders Hayden (Associate Professor of Environmental Policy, Department of Political Science, Dalhousie University, Canada) published the Routledge Handbook of Global Sustainability Governance.

In the handbook, renowned international academics highlight important analytical and normative perspectives, material and non-material structural barriers, and opportunities for real sustainability transformation and systemic change in relation to current research findings (Kalfagianni, Fuchs & Hayden, 2019).
Doris Fuchs is also the author of the chapter "Living Well within Limits: the Vision of Consumption Corridors". The chapter starts from the central problem of excessive consumption and discusses various concepts to counter it. The concept of consumption corridors and ways of implementing them are discussed in more detail. ZIN junior scholar Tobias Gumbert also contributed a chapter to this book, namely "Materiality and Nonhuman Agency". It argues that alternative notions of materiality and the recognition of the capacity of non-humans to act enable a critical perspective on the normative foundations and conceptual instruments of global sustainability governance.

Source: Kalfagianni, Fuchs & Hayden (Ed.) (2019): Routledge Handbook of Global Sustainability Governance, London: Routledge
Online version: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315170237

ZIN spokesperson Prof. Doris Fuchs and ZIN junior scholar Tobias Gumbert will take part in the contributors’ workshop "IRresponsibility in World Politics" in Muenster on May 28 and 29 , where they present a contribution on responsibility in the global agrifood system.

The contributors’ workshop, hosted by Prof. Antje Vetterlein (Professor of Global Governance at the University of Muenster), aims at the preparation of the handbook "Responsibility in International Relations Theory", which shall serve as basic work on the interdisciplinary multi-policy topic "Responsibility in Global Politics". During the workshop, Prof. Doris Fuchs and her colleague Tobias Gumbert present a paper entitled "Moral Geographies of Responsibility in the Global Agrifood System". In the context of this contribution, they analyse how forms of responsible agey are established in certain spatial contexts through a reference to geographical orders with morally appropriate behaviours (the so-called "moral geographies of responsibility") in the global agrifood system.

On April 16, ZIN spokeswoman Prof. Doris Fuchs commented on the lecture "Necessities and luxuries: how to combine redistribution with sustainable consumption" by Prof. Ian Gough. The lecture was held at the Université de Genève (Geneva) as part of a sociological forum on sustainable and ethical consumption and was also part of a three-day international workshop on consumption corridors in which the ZIN spokeswoman participated.
In his lecture, Prof. Ian Gough pointed out connections between ideas from his book "Heat, Greed and Human Need. Climate Change, Capitalism and Sustainable Wellbeing" and the concept of consumption corridors and discussed, inter alia, the extent to which the concept of "human needs" can be used to establish links between planetary boundaries and justice or equality. Subsequently, discussant Prof. Doris Fuchs reflected upon the challenge of implementing Gough's ideas in a dysfunctional democracy and called, among other things, for thinking about a "sustainable democracy" and for limiting the role of money in politics.

An audio recording of Prof. Ian Gough's lecture and Prof. Doris Fuchs' commentary is available online here.

In the newly published anthology “Die Enzyklika Laudato si’. Ein interdisziplinärer Nachhaltigkeitsansatz?” members of the ZIN take a close look at various aspects of the encyclical from their respective professional perspectives. Marianne Heimach-Steins and Nils Stockmann begin by examining the role of the church as an actor in social change in a “Dialog zwischen christlicher Sozialethik und Politikwissenschaft” (Heimbach-Steins / Schlacke 2019: 6). Subsequently, Paul Reuber and Doris Fuchs critically comment on the political spatial constructions of society and the environment contained in the encyclical from the perspective of political geography and political economy. In the next chapter, Markus Lederer deals with the Pope’s critique of capitalism from a political science and political economy standpoint. While the following chapter by Sabine Schlacke takes an international law perspective by focusing on state responsibility for environment and development, Matthias Grundmann, Benjamin Görgen and Björn Wendt examine socio-theoretical and socio-ecological aspects of sustainability from a sociological point of view. Lastly, Tillmann Buttschardt and Cornelia Steinhäuser examine “from the perspective of landscape ecology, what images and terms the encyclical uses to talk about soil as a resource and which signals result for the ‘holistic ecology’ represented by Pope Francis” (Heimbach-Steins / Schlacke 2019: 7) [own translation]. Summarized information and an order form can be found under this link.

[Source: Heimbach-Steins, Marianne und Schlacke, Sabine (Hrsg.) (2019): Die Enzyklika Laudato si‘. Ein interdisziplinärer Nachhaltigkeitsansatz?. Baden-Baden: Nomos.]