Dumb island birds, invasive species dressed as cute purple flowers, and trees the size of skyscrapers. What better way to end your summer and start the new academic year than by discussing, scavenging, and observing these topics. This is exactly what the PhD candidates of Young Liveable Planet (YLP) did on 25 August during YLP’s very first excursion to the Hortus Botanicus in Leiden.
A Leiden and Mainz (Germany) based team studies the activities of early humans in a 125,000 years old Last Interglacial ecosystem, formerly exposed in a large open cast brown coal pit near Halle (Germany). The Last Interglacial is an important warm-temperate period, showing the full flora and fauna under a climate very similar to the present one and hence considered a good baseline for “natural” biodiversity, devoid of human influence. However, the team recently showed that already 125,000 years ago, human fire use created a distinct anthropogenic footprint in the Last Interglacial vegetation history in central Germany. Now, their new study adds an important layer to our knowledge of hominin activities there.
This semester we again organize the elective Nitrogen and Sustainability for 36 master students mainly from Industrial Ecology and Governance of Sustainability. The course helps the students to understand the complexity of the Dutch nitrogen crisis and the role different stakeholders play.
Agricultural production is one of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change around the world, and poorer countries face significantly more difficulties than the developed world. Coffee is an agricultural commodity that most people enjoy but are oblivious to the climate-related challenges affecting coffee farmers. Among the many challenges affecting coffee production is the price volatility, prevalence of fungal diseases, and migration of younger generations from rural to urban regions. In such a complex setup, how can their quality of life and ecosystems and our favorite cup of coffee be guaranteed in the future? And, how can we as scientists contribute to ensuring the sustainability and resilience of coffee producers?
Many students are finishing their master thesis on sustainability this summer. In this blog, we reflect on their topics, approaches, and goals by highlighting theses from Governance of Sustainability, European Law, Global Archaeology, Computer Science: Artificial Intelligence, Industrial Ecology, and Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology.
The publication of the recent IPCC report on climate change has not gone unnoticed, to put it mildly, certainly not within the Liveable Planet community.
79 students, 15 organisations, and 16 projects: within the master’s programme Governance of Sustainability, diverse groups of students worked together with organisations to tackle sustainability challenges. In this blog, Annemiek de Looze reflects on how the power of their transdisciplinary approaches to problem-solving was the key to a successful, interesting, fun semester.
Scientists from all different disciplines at Leiden University work on sustainability challenges. Together we strive for a liveable planet by connecting these scientists. Are you a researcher and do you want to contribute to tackling sustainability issues? Join our program and work together on solutions for the future of our planet.
Recent debates on energy transitions and poverty illustrate the social ecological complexities of sustainability problems. These cannot be tackled by single academic disciplines – nor by academics alone. In this blog, Marja Spierenburg reflects on the need for, and challenges of ‘transdisciplinarity’.
Dr. Katharine MacDonald (Faculty of Archaeology) sketches the background to a recent paper in Science Advances, co-authored by her and other members of the Liveable Planet team.
