This year’s climate camp, organized by the Scientists for Future (S4F) Gießen section took place at Castle Rauischholzhausen from Oct 17 – 19, 2025.

Prof. Dr. Thomas Kopp reported on Sustainable Economy
referring upon questions like:

Is economic growth possible without an environmental price?

Is economic growth possible while simultaneously reducing carbon emissions?

Or is this decoupling an illusion? Might be the so called “post-growth economy” a possibility to reduce emissions sufficient?

Further information can be found here https://www.s4f-camp-giessen.com/ and here https://www.s4f-camp-giessen.com/programmneu

This year's annual congress of the European Association of Agricultural Economists (EAAE) took place at the University of Bonn, Germany. It was also the 50th anniversary of this association. Chair member Marcel Böhl presented his work "Can Inequality & Biodiversity Loss Be Tackled Together?" (joint work with T. Kopp and M. Nabernegg). 
Prof. Kopp presented the papers "Reducing Negative Effects of Risk Aversion on Farming Outcomes: Evidence for Systematic External Selection into Profitable Contracts" (with A. K. Mishra and A. Dsouza) and "The Relation between Income Inequality and Dietary Diversity" (with A. Risius and M. Nabernegg).

The Professorship for  Global Nutrition and Trade at the University of Gießen advertises the position of a Research Assistant with a Bachelor`s degree to start on 01.10.2024 with the following conditions:

• 8 Hours per week at a monthly salary of EUR 486.
• Permanent presence in Gießen will not be required.
• Candidates must have obtained a BA degree and be enrolled in a German university.

Applications are to be sent to thomas.kopp before September 14, 2025.

More details can be found under this link: www.uni-giessen.de/de/ueber-uns/karriere/stellenangebote/studentische-hilfskraefte/hiwi_global_nutrition_and_trade

Prof. Dr. Thomas Kopp
Global Nutrition and Trade

Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, Nutritional Sciences, and Environmental Management
University of Giessen

Zeughaus
Senckenbergstraße 3
35390 Gießen - G E R M A N Y
+49(0)178-4917624
thomas.kopp@uni-giessen.de

Google Scholar * ORCID

Find my public PGP-key for secure emailing on this keyserver.   

Group members Aimen Abbas, Ayça Akçakoca, and Vipul Chawla participated in the Rethinking Economics Summer School, organized by the  Institute for Transformation and Economy Studies . The Summer School brought together academics and practitioners to explore diverse economic schools of thought and to engage in discussions on anti-fascist economics—its causes, consequences, and potential courses of action.

During the Summer School, participants examined topics such as housing system transformation through systems thinking and financialization, the role of agriculture in sustainable food transitions, and energy policy and climate action in the context of politicization and populism. 

Vipul Chawla presented his work on “Income Inequality and Housing Living Space in Europe.” His workshop invited participants to reflect on critical questions, including what constitutes adequate housing, how housing living space can be measured, and which factors influence housing adequacy. His study explores the relationship between income inequality and housing living space, with a focus on how this relationship differs between post-socialist and non-post-socialist countries in Europe.

This year's annual meeting of the AAEA took place in Denver Colorado. Tom Kopp presented the joint work with Alwin Dsouza (New Mexico State University) and Ashok K. Mishra (Arizona State University) entitled "Reducing Negative Effects of Risk Aversion on Farming Outcomes: Evidence for Systematic External Selection into Profitable Contracts". 

Several members of our group visited Oslo/Norway to attend the 18th Conference of the International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE) which was also jointly organized as the 11th International Degrowth Conference.

Five Phd candidates as well as Professor Kopp presented their current work and enjoyed the discussions with the attendees of the conference.

Dilsuz Nurmukhanmatova presented her study, "Market Power, Digitalization, and Income Inequality in Europe", in which she revealed that while higher firm‑level markups tend to amplify income inequality, increased ICT investment significantly attenuates these inequality‑widening effects of market power.

Aimen Abbas gave insights on her study "Assessing the Distributional Impact of Environmental Policy Stringency in the EU". This study finds that stricter environmental policies raise pre- and post-tax national income inequality, but, thanks to taxation and in-kind transfers, have no significant effect on disposable income inequality.

Marcel Böhl’s study, “Can We Tackle Inequality & Biodiversity Loss Together?” indicates that in high‑income countries, efforts to reduce inequality alone can inadvertently harm biodiversity, highlighting the necessity of pairing redistribution policies with targeted conservation measures to safeguard ecosystems in these countries.

Inga Stademann presented her work "Success determinants and impact of sustainability projects on overall sustainability of universities" in the form of a poster. She finds that early planning for project continuation and aligning project goals with institutional sustainability strategies contribute meaningfully to long-term transformation efforts.

Markus Nabernegg presented his work "Extreme Income Inequality in Ecuador - Dollarization, Commodity Price Boom, and Citizen Revolution in Ecuador", revealing that Ecuador's economy shifted from an extractive to a weakly inclusive system during commodity booms, but rising economic power concentration and the COVID-19 shock have eroded redistribution and threatened this fragile process.

Thomas Kopp displayed his research titled "The Relation between Income Inequality and Dietary Diversity". This study finds that cutting income inequality boosts dietary diversity in moderately and highly unequal societies but can reduce it in already equal ones, so efforts to lower inequality should also protect diet variety.

Thomas Kopp and Markus Nabernegg also organized a special session entitled "New Research on the Relationship between Economic Inequality and Environmental Impact", which brought together leading scholars in the field - including Lutz Sager, Ilona Otto, Svenja Flechtner, and Steffen Lange - to examine the trade-offs between inequality and environmental degradation and to challenge the political and economic paradigms shaping the inequality-ecology nexus.

We are running hybrid online classes with students from the University of Gießen (JLU) and Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) on “World Food Systems in Transition.” The course is part of the “Internationally Connected Digital Classroom Education” (ICODICE) project.

Students follow lectures by Prof. Dr. Thomas Kopp (JLU) and Prof. Dr. Archana Sathyan (KAU), give joint presentations in cross-university groups, and take part in small-group discussions in online breakout rooms. The course examines alternative models for sustainability in global food systems.

As part of the ICODICE (Internationally connected digital classrooms education) project, students from the University of Siegen and the Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) worked together online to design activities for an upcoming online session between school classes in Kerala and Germany.

The goal of the session was to prepare the achievement of learning objectives on urban agriculture and watershed management in the context of sustainable farming during the school exchange. This was the final session of the summer term, and everyone is now looking forward to finalizing the planning and carrying out the online exchange with the school classes in the winter term.

The Chair of the Professorship Global Trade and World Food Security conducted a team meeting on June 12 and 13 at the Zeughaus building at Justus-Liebig-Universität in Gießen. Chair members shared updates on their respective ongoing research projects and provided helpful feedback to each other's work. Since this was the team's first meeting in Gießen, the members enjoyed exploring the beautiful city and its surroundings.

Prof. Kopp and project staff member Aimen Abbas participated in the intermediate project review meeting of the Horizon Europe-funded GreenPaths initiative, held at the European Commission in Brussels. The meeting provided an opportunity to present the project's progress and outcomes to date. The contributions from the University of Siegen / Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen were positively received.

On May 22nd, Prof. Kopp opened the conference "Sustainable Campus Thuringia" which took place at the University of Jena, Germany. In his key note address, Tom Kopp gave an overview of the concept of Experimental Organisational Development and presented various applications, including the projects RAUM (Rooms, Work, Environment, Co-Creation) and Wo.W (Wellbeing in Science) which were and are conducted within the higher education system in Germany.

In collaboration with the Plural Economics department at the University of Siegen, the chair organized a conference on the sustainable transformation of private and public organizations. The event began with keynote speeches by Dr. Maike Gossen (TU Berlin) on sustainability strategies for companies and Prof. Dr. Thomas Kopp, who presented a practice-oriented case study on experimental organizational development. A discussion with participants followed, providing an opportunity for exchange and reflection. The morning concluded with networking sessions, allowing participants to connect and share ideas.

In the afternoon, the conference focused on two thematic areas. The first explored the sustainable transformation of public institutions, featuring key insights from the Lantern project. Simultaneously, participants engaged in discussions on alternative economic models. Within this session, Hannes Wender and Dr. Dr. Johannes Halbe from the University of Osnabrück examined the complexities of regional transformation processes, highlighting obstacles and detours. Jana Schmidt from the University of Siegen presented the Nascent project on Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), while Elena Schiff contributed a practical perspective by showcasing the work of IGLU gUG in Cologne. These interdisciplinary insights and hands-on approaches provided valuable contributions to the sustainable development of organizations and economic structures.

Students from the University of Siegen and the Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) followed Ms. Riza Mathew's lecture on urban gardening. A series of digital participation formats allowed students from Germany and India to interact with each other. The lecture was the kick-off for the second year of international digital teaching within the ICODICE project.

The ICODICE (Internationally connected digital classrooms education) project of the University of Siegen and KAU designs courses in teacher training and makes digital teaching methods tangible based on the topics of global inequality, socio-ecological sustainability and climate justice from the perspectives of the Global North and South.

Following the kind invitation of our colleague, Prof. Vivian Wei Huang at the Swedish Agricultural University (SLU) in Uppsala, Prof. Kopp presented his ongoing work at SLU's monthly research seminar. The title of the presentation was "The Effects of Digital Yield Monitoring on Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the United States" and is based on joint work with Markus Nabernegg (University of Siegen), Robert Finger and Robert Huber (both ETH Zürich), and Rich Sexton (UC Davis).

As part of the LANTERN project, we are currently conducting the workshop "Wellbeing in Academia" (Wohlbefinden im Wissenschaftsbetrieb, Wo.W). In a workshop, led by Niklas Heiland and Severin Caspari from Heiland & Caspari (www.prozessbegleitung.de), we co-created a prototype for a new element in the onboarding process of newly appointed professors at the University of Siegen. Details on the workshop can be found here: www.hochschulen-transformieren.de/wow

The Annual conference of the Agricultural Economics Society (AES) took place in Bordeaux, France. Prof. Kopp presented the poster "Reducing Negative Effects of Risk Aversion on Farming Outcomes: Evidence for Systematic External Selection into Profitable Contracts", based on joint work with Alwin Dsouza (New Mexico State) and Ashok K. Mishra (Arizona State). The Poster won the society's Best Poster Award!

The DIKULE project organized the DIKULE-Symposium in Bamberg, Germany. Prof. Kopp presented a poster on our teaching project "ICODICE", in which students from two German Universities and Kerala Agricultural University in India participate in a joint module. The project is conducted in collaboration with Prof. Archana Raghavan Sathyan and Ms. Aswathy Rani (both at KAU) and Mr. Claudius Engeling and Ms. Ayça Akçakoca (both University of Siegen).

On April 1, 2025, Thomas Kopp started a new appointment as full professor for  Global Trade and World Food Security at Justus-Liebig-University of Gießen. Once a new website is available, the link will be shared here.

Several members of the LANTERN project attended the BMBFs Symposium of the funding line Sustainability in Science" (SiSi) in Eberswalde to present the current developments in the different work packages of this project. Further details can be found on the project's website:  www.hochschulen-transformieren.de