We acknowledge that humanity is confronted with existential crises in the form of climate change and biodiversity loss and focus on finding “solutions” to these crises.This approach belies the fact that we consider ourselves to somehow be above nature. If we just find a little “fix”, we can continue business as usual.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Humans are a part of nature and the crisis we are facing force us to accept that we must better our relationship with the planet and its resources in order for our societies to continue to thrive. That challenge will never be “solved”!

We will have to manage this relationship forever more but we will likely use different tools for that management over time.

This talk focuses on defining sustainable development, the role of the sustainable development goals (SDGs), and how we all can contribute to putting our societies onto a more sustainable development trajectory.