Browsing by Person "Albert, Christian"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2

Operational principles for fostering transformative qualities and capacities in higher education sustainability science and practice
(2026) Fagerholm, Nora; Coles, Neil; Beery, Thomas; Torralba, Mario; Hakkarainen, Viola; Albert, Christian; Andersson, Erik; Bergström, Ryan; Bieling, Claudia; Gentin, Sandra; Klonner, Carolin; Olafsson, Anton Stahl; Raymond, Christopher; Rouhiainen, Henna; Wamsler, Christine; Fagerholm, Nora; Department of Geography and Geology, University of Turku, 20114, Turku, Finland; Coles, Neil; Institute of Agriculture, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, 6009, Perth, WA, Australia; Beery, Thomas; Sustainable Multifunctional Landscapes Research Group, Kristianstad University, Kristianstad, Sweden; Torralba, Mario; Environmental Geography Group, IVM Institute for Environmental Studies, VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Hakkarainen, Viola; Faculty of Sustainability, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Lüneburg, Germany; Albert, Christian; Institute of Environmental Planning, Leibniz University Hannover, Herrenhaeuser Str. 2, 30419, Hannover, Germany; Andersson, Erik; Ecosystems and Environment Research Programme, Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, 00014, Helsinki, Finland; Bergström, Ryan; Sustainable Multifunctional Landscapes Research Group, Kristianstad University, Kristianstad, Sweden; Bieling, Claudia; Division Societal Transition and Agriculture (430B), Institute of Social Sciences in Agriculture, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany; Gentin, Sandra; Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark; Klonner, Carolin; Department of Geography and Geology, University of Turku, 20114, Turku, Finland; Stahl Olafsson, Anton; Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark; Raymond, Christopher; Ecosystems and Environment Research Programme, Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, 00014, Helsinki, Finland; Rouhiainen, Henna; Biodiversity Unit, University of Turku, Turku, Finland; Wamsler, Christine; Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS), Lund, Sweden
Education for sustainability is widely recognised as a critical pathway for driving the transformations needed to address today’s polycrisis. Despite growing theoretical and conceptual advancements in sustainability education, current approaches have not achieved the deep systemic changes required. While university networks and individual institutions increasingly integrate sustainability into their education, concerns persist that transformative learning agendas often remain superficial. In particular, they frequently fail to equip learners with the emotional resilience and skills necessary to engage effectively with complex global challenges, as well as educators with the pedagogical framework to facilitate such learning. This article emphasises the need to advance transformative learning in sustainability science and practice in higher education by addressing the inner dimensions of sustainability: our individual and collective values, beliefs, worldviews, and associated transformative qualities and capacities. This means targeting deep leverage points and meaningful change by supporting more relational approaches, including an integrated inner–outer change in being, thinking, and acting. We provide seven operational principles for supporting the inner–outer transformation towards sustainability in learning and teaching sustainability science and practice, especially in geography and related fields. These principles highlight the importance of nurturing five clusters of transformative qualities and capacities—awareness, connection, insight, purpose, and agency—guided by relational approaches required to support profound and integrative learning experiences. We provide concrete examples of how to implement these principles. The proposed principles aim to inspire educators and learners to deeply engage with sustainability challenges to contribute to transformative change across individual, collective, and system levels.
Pathways for biodiversity enhancement in German agricultural landscapes
(2025) Sponagel, Christian; Thompson, Amibeth; Paetow, Hubertus; Mupepele, Anne‐Christine; Bieling, Claudia; Sommer, Martin; Klein, Alexandra‐Maria; Settele, Josef; Finger, Robert; Huber, Robert; Albert, Christian; Filser, Juliane; Jansen, Florian; Kleemann, Janina; Schreiner, Vera; Lakner, Sebastian
Conserving biodiversity, especially in agricultural landscapes, is a major societal challenge. Broad scientific evidence exists on the impacts of single drivers on biodiversity, such as the intensification of agriculture. However, halting biodiversity decline requires a systemic understanding of the interactions between multiple drivers, which has hardly been achieved so far. Selecting Germany as a case study, the goal of our analysis is (i) to understand how various socio‐economic drivers of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes interact at the national scale, (ii) to identify plausible pathways that most likely will lead to an improvement of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes and (iii) to discuss guiding principles for policy‐making based on the pathways. We applied the expert‐based Cross‐Impact‐Balance (CIB) methodology to the German agri‐food system (target year 2030). Seven descriptors that represent the most relevant socio‐economic drivers of biodiversity (here, we focus on species richness) in agricultural landscapes in Germany were defined. In three workshops with different groups of experts, we assessed all the interactions and impacts between these descriptors. From the workshops, seven overlapping scenarios were identified and aggregated into four main future pathways for enhancing biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. These pathways are: (1) ‘Innovation and stricter legislation’, (2) ‘Major change in protein production and CAP shift’, (3) ‘Major change in protein production and national legislation’ and (4) ‘Major social changes compensate for a lack of innovation in food production’. Socio‐economic drivers interact to varying degrees. Societal values have a strong active influence on the system, e. g. agricultural policy, whereas the orientation and objectives of agriculture, e. g. focus on public goods, are rather passively determined. Conserving biodiversity thus depends upon the evolution of societal values, European and national nature conservation and agricultural policies, innovations in plant and protein production as well as on global commodity markets. A key message for policymakers is that there are generally different, complementary options for achieving the objective of improving biodiversity. This is important when specific drivers such as the CAP cannot be steered in a particular desired direction.