International forces united: Brazil Centre, SABio and ZIN create space for multilingual discussion on energy transition

The SABio project team at the Institute of Political Science (Ifpol), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL), the Center of Interdisciplinary Sustainability Research (ZIN) and the Brazil Centre jointly organised the World Café on the topic of "Energy Transition from another view: Perspectives from South America" as part of the WWU Sustainability Day "Campus Eart 2022" on 20 October 2022. The World Café was opened by Dr Karen Siegel, head of the SABio research group and ZIN member, and Prof. Dr Tillmann Buttschardt (ZIN and Institute of Landscape Ecology).

At the event, approximately 15 participants had the opportunity to get to know the research work on Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina through the input presentations of the SABio research group: Dr Karen Siegel presented a short introduction about the three South American countries and the topic of "bioeconomy". Afterwards, the young researchers Dr Melisa Deciancio (Argentina), Daniel Kefeli (Uruguay) and Guilherme Stein (Brazil) gave short presentations on the development of bioeconomies in their countries and the challenges regarding sustainability.

They provided valuable input for the subsequent discussion, which took place in different languages and group constellations. This made the discussions even more productive and colourful: for each group wrote down questions or comments on the respective topics on colourful post-its, which were pasted on flipcharts after each discussion. The final gallery of results showed many critical and open questions for a future, more intensive examination of the multifaceted and highly topical issue.

Finally, Anja Grecko Lorenz, Executive Director of the Brazil Centre, gave an overview on the Brazil Centre and its services as well as the numerous cooperation opportunities.

The interdisciplinary research group SABio received valuable support from the Brazil Centre of the WWU, especially during the pandemic period in 2020, regarding the entry of its junior research group from Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina in Germany and provided on-site support for the PhD candidates.  

Katy dos Santos, Gabriele Erwig, Emma Pötting and Marie Podien provided support with the preparation of the event and communication in different languages.

Watch the event video here.