Welcome to my Website!
Exciting times are ahead! Over the next three decades, we have to create a true civilization jump: inventing new ways of life and business that are fun and at the same time can be experienced by all people on the earth, without jeopardizing our livelihoods. What a challenge – and what an opportunity to set the course for the global society of the future!
With my writings I would like to help making this opportunity possible. To simplify navigation, I cluster my texts into four themes that are simultaneously mirroring my main areas of interest:
Global Justice, Climate Policy, Sustainable Economics, and World Trade & Agriculture.
Enjoy reading and thinking ahead, and don’t forget: Another world is possible – let’s make it together!
Tilman Santarius
Green Growth Unraveled
Can energy consumption and emissions be reduced greatly, while the economy continue to grow? This study by Tilman Santarius goes to the question of how energy efficiency measures generate so-called rebound effects that increase energy consumption and, thus, run counter to the goal of energy conservation. It describes a variety of possible rebound effects and analyzes the challenges to address rebound with environmental policies. The conclusion: only if the economy stops growing, can natural consumption be reduced sufficiently.
Climate and Trade – Why Climate Change Calls for Fundamental Reforms in World Trade Policy
Foreign economic and trade policy are mostly designed along by the principles of free trade and export maximization. As a result, the world economy has become interconnected and more dense, and production chains span from one hemisphere to the other. Is this globalized world trade compatible with the aim to keep global warming below the dangerous threshold of 2 or even 1.5 degrees Celsius? Here is the study “Climate and Trade“, which highlights reform options for trade as well as for climate policy. In particular, it raises the issues of displacement of emissions (leakage), border adjustment measures, and technology transfer.
Slow Trade – Sound Farming. A Multilateral Framework for Sustainable Markets in Agriculture.
Together with ten internationally renowned experts, Wolfgang Sachs and Tilman Santarius outline an alternative to agricultural trade policies of the World Trade Organization. The report points to new perspectives and policies needed for the agricultural trading system that provide the poor with real opportunities, protect the environment and support the transition of agriculture into a post-fossil age. Here is the original version of the report Slow Trade – Sound Farming in English von Slow Trade – Sound Farming, which has also been published in German, French, Spanish, Arab, Czech, Polish, Portuguese, Indonesian, and Italian.
Fair Future. Limited Resources and Global Justice.
Oil crisis, water conflicts, declining food security – we hear one report after another about resource scarcity – while with growing populations and huge poverty, nations are demanding their right to development. Clashes over resources, both major and minor, are often the unseen factor behind chaos and violence and it is vital to start thinking about how the distribution of resources can be made more just. This book, written by specialists from the internationally renowned Wuppertal Institute headed by Wolfgang Sachs and Tilman Santarius, puts forwards perspectives for resource justice and outlines a global economic and environmental policy equally committed to nature and to humanity. See here for the english edition (Indian edition), or here for the German, Spanish, or Italian editions. Click here for the preface for the Japanese edition of Fair Future, forthcoming 2013.