ITAS Colloquium Lectures

Transdisciplinary Research for Scaling Sustainability Innovations in the Food Economy

Arnim Wiek, University of Freiburg

The globalized food economy is characterized by large economic volatilities and vulnerabili-ties; contributes to climate change, biodiversity loss, and water contamination; tolerates sig-nificant wage discrepancies and exploitative practices, including forced and child labor; fos-ters unhealthy eating habits, lack of healthy food access, and excessive food waste; and thereby causes enormous externalized cost. Thus, there is broad agreement that the food economy is in need of redirecting its development path towards the sustainable development goals (SDGs). This ought to be done by means of sustainability innovations leading up to a sustainability transformation of the entire food economy. While numerous such small-scale innovations have been developed over the past several decades, they often have not been carefully scaled and adopted by the majority of businesses, support organizations and con-sumers; therefore, leaving the sustainability transformation yet unachieved. This talk will summarize the current challenges, provide arguments for scaling existing sustainable inno-vations (rather than inventing new ones), and describe different ways of how to scale them. The talk concludes with outlining an agenda for transdisciplinary research that supports the sustainability transformation of the food economy.

Arnim Wiek is Humboldt-Professor for Sustainable Food Economy at the Institute for Eco-nomics at the University of Freiburg. His research investigates sustainable innovations in small to medium-sized food enterprises as well as political, financial, and educational support for them. Sector-wide investigations currently focus on food processing, retail, and public catering. His solution-oriented research approach is characterized by generating evidence on innovations and closely collaborating with practitioners in businesses, governmental agen-cies and the non-profit sector (transdisciplinary research). He is also engaged in sustainabil-ity education and institutionalizing sustainability science at universities in Germany and elsewhere. He held prior positions at Arizona State University, the University of British Co-lumbia, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, as well as guest pro-fessorships at Utrecht University, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, and the University of Tokyo.

The lecture takes place on site at ITAS (Karlstraße 11, Kalrsruhe) and will be broadcast via Zoom. Please contact Meike Hebich for the Zoom access if you are interested to participate. The language of the event is English.