The United Nations University (UNU) is the academic arm of the United Nations (UN). It
bridges the academic world and the UN system. Its goal is to develop
sustainable solutions for current and future problems of humankind in all
aspects of life. Through a problem-oriented and interdisciplinary approach it
aims at applied research and education on a global scale. UNU was founded in
1973 and is an autonomous organ of the UN General Assembly. The
University comprises headquarters Tokyo, Japan, and more than a dozen Institutes
and Programmes worldwide.
Prof. Dr. Janos Bogardi gave his “Last Lecture” at the University Club (UNICLUB) Bonn, on 30 April 2009. The event was organised to commemorate the end of his tenure as Vice-Rector a.i. in Europe of the United Nations University and as the Director of the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS). On this occasion, he and the President of the UNICLUB, Prof. Dr. Max Huber, signed an agreement of scientific cooperation, initiating a new annual public event series addressing different aspects of vulnerability. A successor for Prof. Bogardi has not been appointed yet and for the next months, Prof. Bogardi will continue to support the institute´s work as director.
"This “Last Lecture” event is not to simply celebrate the end of the tenure of Prof. Bogardi with UNU, but also the opportunity, in true Prof.-Bogardi-fashion, to start something new”, said Dr. Fabrice Renaud, Associate Director, UNU-EHS, referring to the agreement signed between the UNU and the UNICLUB Bonn.
Prof. Max Huber and Prof. Janos Bogardi signing agreement
Both organizations agreed to jointly organize a new public event series once a year called the “Dag Hammarskjöld Lecture” in tribute to the second Secretary General of the UN. Hammarskjöld, who died in a plane crash in 1961, was a distinguished professor with outstanding academic, international civic service and policy-relevant achievements.
The signing of this agreement was preceded by an academic program kicked off with an introduction speech by the moderator, Dr. Fabrice Renaud, followed by Prof. Dr. Bogardi’s much awaited “Last Lecture”. Two lectures were then held by Dr. Jörn Birkmann and Prof. Dr. Matthias Winiger, respectively academic staff of the UNU-EHS and the University of Bonn.
Prof. Bogardi is the founder of the UNU in Bonn and, as Dr. Renaud put it “he transformed an organization from a three person operation to one with close to 70 scientists and staff.”
Ambiguities and Obstacles
Prof. Bogardi described his last lecture, entitled “Sustainability and Vulnerability: Our Abilities to Confuse Ourselves”, as “thematically nested between philosophy, science critics, semantics and sheer speculations”. In his speech he covered the ambiguities and obstacles of working in the fields of sustainability and vulnerability, two core concepts in the research of UNU-EHS, explaining that “these terms are not value-free. They are laden with our perceptions, beliefs, preferences and frustrations”.
Though, Prof. Bogardi added “I am not frustrated, but rather proud that the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security has made some progress in defining and assessing dimensions of vulnerability”.
Talking about the term “sustainability”, Prof. Bogardi said that it remains very broad and is nowadays more of a “substitute for ‘religion’’ than a precise scientific term. In order for sustainability to be “useful for practical planning and operational purposes it needs to be defined more precisely in space and in time.” He explained that “without assigning at least implicitly an accepted and desirable ‘life expectancy’ metric to anything we want to be sustainable, we may face the sad fact that there is apparently no absolute sustainability”.
A Kind of Sustainability Guarantee
Prof. Bogardi recommended “a kind of sustainability guarantee of 60, 100 or 120 years for every decision taken”, which would be an “enormous step towards operationalizing the principle of sustainability.”
When subsequently approaching the term of “vulnerability”, Prof. Bogardi said it has a large array of definitions and stands for something undesirable, describing it as the “predisposition of someone or something to get hurt” and specifying that “vulnerability is difficult to assess since it is an “inherent feature”.
As the professor pointed out, after a catastrophe, it is easier to tell who was vulnerable to it, but he underlined that it is much more important to find out who is vulnerable beforehand “to build up our defenses, to protect and to assist” in due time, those who are vulnerable.
Adapting to Events and Changes
It is important to bear in mind that susceptibility and vulnerability “show only one side of the coin”. Prof. Bogardi also stressed that fortunately, we have capacities as well: “we can resist, we can cope with – at least for a while -, we can recover from - being resilient - and we can adapt to an event or change whereby accepting and accommodating to a new reality.”
Prof. Bogardi concluded with a list of questions illustrating the complexity of sustainability and vulnerability issues. Finding answers and solutions will remain a challenge for future UNU-EHS research.
