Humankind is facing the third biggest revolution in history. After the birth of agriculture and the industrial revolution, an ecological revolution is approaching. Klaus Töpfer, former executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and founder of the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS), outlined one of his key observations when assessing latest changes and events in global environmental politics during the 10th Berlin Conference, which took place October 8th and 9th. According to Töpfer, highlighting the importance of the social dimension of environmental politics is a step in the right direction, as implementing new concepts for addressing global environmental problems will be less a scientific or economic than a socio-political challenge. Specific recommendations for decision makers, however, will be inefficient if the scientific community remains ignored.

Yet, there has been little news about this important, but obviously less influential, scientific community dealing with global environmental problems. In other words, there was no scientific revolution in Berlin. Even worse: the recent 'climategate’ controversy concerning the role of research and how to avoid a loss of credibility was of particularly high concern of the participants. Among others, Professor Adil Najam from Boston University pointed out the need to restrict the use of long-term prediction graphs and scenarios since environmental change is a present and urgent problem, which has to be addressed now.

The debates in Berlin underscored lack of action and international cooperation regarding global environmental problems such as climate change or loss of biodiversity remain huge challenges for the international community, especially as the gap between the poor and the affluent continues to grow. Thus, Prof. Dirk Messner (GDI) pointed out, the generally increasing economic growth rates of developing countries have to be evaluated with caution, since these figures might not be sustainable. The participants jointly agreed on the need to redefine the traditional paradigm of wealth and development in accordance with environmental standards. To this end, the principle of intra- and intergenerational justice should also be included. (Judith Hardt)

For more information concerning the Berlin Conference 2010, please visit http://www.berlinconference.org/2010/.

Published in: ECC-Newsletter, October 2010