Socio-ecological sustainability

Our approach

What do we mean by socio-ecological sustainability?

• Considering and safeguarding human need satisfaction and the good life for all, everywhere, now and in the future.
• Considering and safeguarding biophysical systems and living conditions (across the species-divide) and staying within planetary boundaries.
• Recognizing the urgency to transition to low-carbon societies in the face of widespread, rapid, and intensifying climate change.

What starting points guide us?

• Researching diverse relationships and dynamics witin human-nature-relations / more-than-human ecologies.
• Researching how societies can provide for their citizens‘ wellbeing while severely lessening environmental harm and strengthening regenerative capacities.
• Researching transformational pathways that include mitigation and adaptation strategies with the overall aim to enhance wellbeing while keeping within the 1.5° target.

How does our Innovation Hub want to contribute to this?

• Bridging Social Sciences / Humanities and Natural Sciences by generating interdisciplinary exchange formats and research groups.
• Providing / producing normative / ethical assessments and evaluative criteria for sustainability challenges.
• Emphasizing a transdisciplinary orientation through citizen science, outreach activities, and co-creation processes, encouraging (self-)education and authentic encounters.

Objectives

With its focus on sustainable development, the Innovation Hub on socio-ecological sustainability at the University of Münster is dedicated to a central challenge of our time that requires comprehensive societal change.

Primarily ecological issues such as the climate crisis, species extinction and the energy transition cannot be separated from primarily social issues of peace, democracy and justice. As crises are complex and globally interconnected, solutions must also take this into account. Innovative strategies and ideas that enable societies to overcome the socio-ecological challenges of the present are urgently needed. In order to develop these, inter- and transdisciplinary and, in particular, a deep integration and interlocking of social and natural science contributions to sustainability research and practice are required.

The aim of the Innovation Hub in Münster is to analyse, discuss and respond to the diverse requirements for global solutions to current sustainability challenges.

Center for Interdisciplinary Sustainability Research (ZIN)

REACH - Euregio Start-up Center

The REACH – Euregio Start-up Center is the incubator of the Münster InnoHub and is mainly responsible for the Innovation/Transfer area.

The InnoHub promotes and networks start-ups and spin-offs in particular through a coach-the-coach program and various workshops in the areas of women, social and intersectional entrepreneurship, innovation skills & capacities and know-how for start-up teams.

Within the Education field of action, various formats on sustainability topics such as Sustainable Design Thinking, Green Skills and Sustainability & Green Transition are developed and used at the InnoHub.

In addition to various courses for students, open classes offer a publicly accessible educational program for different target groups and various training courses and workshops are used for further education and training within the Ulysseus network. A Teaching Innovation Lab helps to design and shape the offerings in the spirit of transformative education.

Münster Center for Open Science (MüCOS)

Living Labs or Real-world Laboratories are formats that affect all three fields of action. In sustainability science, they are designed as transdisciplinary and transformative research and development facilities in which various stakeholders from science and civil society learn from each other and work together on sustainable solutions. Innovative ideas, transformation approaches and new social practices are tested and researched in experimental settings.

The Münster Center for Open Science (MüCOS) serves as an Open Data Warehouse and ensures the free accessibility of materials and data produced in the areas of research, teaching and transfer, in particular open access publications, open educational resources and open data.

The transversal element Culture & Creativity aims to include the creative potential that lies in the dialogue and interaction of art and culture with science.