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Lecture on Planetary Futures

June 26, 2025 - "Engaging Human Aspirations to Motivate Progress Towards a World Where People and Nature Thrive Together" (hybrid event)

 

in cooperation with Center for International Development and Environmental Research (ZEU) 

 

Time Place Participation
12 - 2 pm

S3, Zeughaus, Senckenbergstrasse 3, 35390 Gießen

& online via BigBlueButton

no registration required

 

...Engaging Human Aspirations to Motivate Progress Towards a World Where People and Nature Thrive Together

Can human societies shape a better planetary future? Prevailing approaches aimed at addressing nature’s decline tend to focus on limiting human harm to environments and species. This presentation will introduce a new approach based on measuring and promoting national progress towards delivering mutually beneficial relationships among people and the rest of the living world in terms that people widely understand and value. Inspired by the capabilities approach to human development and the Human Development Index (HDI), a new international metric of progress towards a future where people and nature thrive together is under development as part of the UNDP Human Development Report in 2026. 

 

Prof. Erle Ellis 

University of Maryland, Baltimore County & Fellow at the Panel on Planetary Thinking

Erle Ellis is Professor of Geography and Environmental Systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). A Global Highly Cited Researcher, he studies the global ecology of human landscapes in the Anthropocene. He teaches environmental science and landscape ecology at UMBC and has taught at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He is an author of the US National Nature Assessment and the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment, a Fellow of the Global Land Programme, Senior Fellow of the Breakthrough Institute, former Anthropocene Working Group member and Visiting Fellow at Oxford’s Martin School. He published Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction in 2018.