Dorte Pardo Lopéz (EU-Kommission)
Urte Hertrampf (BMWK)
Dr. Franziska Krüger (Stabsstelle Strukturwandel Sachsen-Anhalt)
Andy Haugk (OB Hohenmölsen)
Prof. Dr. Ralf Wehrspohn (Forum Rathenau)
Henning Mertens (Metropolregion Mitteldeutschland)
Institut für Strukturwandel und Nachhaltigkeit
Händel Halle
Salzgrafenplatz 1
The myth of industrial modernity imagined technological progress as a linear process and ignored its fractures and aberrations for a long time. Today, in the face of global climate change, it is becoming clear that resource exploitation and (de)industrialisation processes have left behind spaces of prosperity and innovation as well as zones of technological decay, social inequality and ecological degradation.
But what comes after progress? Can prosperity be preserved and the wounds of the fossil age healed? How can an inclusive transformation into a society without oil and coal succeed? How is a sustainable life with and in the natural environment possible? What goals and values hold a postfossil society together?
A wide variety of social actors in Central Germany and many other regions of the world are currently searching for answers to these questions and for ways into a new era – a future without fossil energies and industries. This involves both the search for social and technological innovations for the future and the recognition of multiple histories and relationships that are embedded in the social fabric of today’s societies that remain reliant and rooted in fossil fuels.
The current planned structural change initiatives include fundamental political, economic, legal, social and cultural changes that require a collective effort.
From an interdisciplinary perspective, the HALIS-Conference will discuss ways to shape the current structural change efforts and thus provide a forum for negotiating postfossil futures in the region and beyond.