Reflections on rural youth and why each one of us can make a contribution to sustainability
Dr. Göttert, how did you come to the topic of sustainability, or did it come to you?
Sustainability is a guiding influence for me – and has been all my life. I come from the rural Middle Rhine region, where my family had been practicing small-scale plot farming for generations. Our great-grandparents, grandparents, parents and children have lived in the same house. There was nothing that wasn’t recycled or reused. We didn’t even have a trash can.
Goodness, which century did you grow up in?
It’s really not all that long ago. We’re talking the period from the 1960s through to the ‘70s – that’s the way it was back then. Then we started seeing more money flow into the villages. People bought cars, fitted airtight plastic windows for draft protection in their half-timbered houses, which had not had professionally renovated. Increased consumption was suddenly possible, coming in the wake of a long period of real poverty.
At the risk of sounding like a great-grandparent recounting tales from another era: Were you happier back then?
Glorifying the past is certainly not the issue here. Still, we can shine a light on things that were better in the past if only to better recognize them today. Some of my most cherished memories included the joy we felt in autumn – when the cellar was piled high with potatoes and with the fruit we had canned – or when slaughtering time came around. That was a far cry from buying something on the run for immediate consumption. We looked forward to the feasts with family and friends gathering to enjoy the harvest and the fruits of our labor. Our convivial consumption had a more primary and festive feel to it than is the case today.
What are some of the positive qualities that our present day can claim for itself?
We have more individual freedoms and the possibility of fulfilling our personal life plans. Girls have long enjoyed the opportunities for acquiring an education. That dates back to my youth.
I graduated from secondary school in 1981. That was around the period that saw the rise of the Greens and their agenda. I was already an active student during my schooldays; I sold recycled paper, for example. I grew up on the Rhine River, which has since been cleaned up. Back then, we stayed clear of the river because of the awful stench it gave off. Every generation of youth has the right to its own time and attitude, a vantage point from which they see their parent’s generation as “weirdos.” Some things will probably never change. That said, I find that today’s youth is genuinely picking up on things that were in fact important to us back then. They’re rethinking consumption habits, for example, and negotiating with their parents about what’s for dinner because they’re savvy about factory farming. We should be dialoguing with each other more and not harping on about how everything was better back then or is better today. No life is utterly free of contradictions. But what I’m seeing is a genuine interest in developing solidarity.
What does social solidarity have to do with sustainability?
For me as Women’s and Equality Opportunity Officer, equal opportunity is part and parcel of sustainability. Sustainability and equal rights are interconnected: each person is taken seriously, consideration is given to all life perspectives, power structures and hierarchies are exposed and challenged, violence and discrimination are combatted. Without social justice and decent living conditions, sustainability is neither conceivable nor feasible. In my role at the University, two motives behind my actions in fighting for better education come together. It is a privilege for me as it is to work at an educational institution and to contribute to the discursive transfer of knowledge.
How does Frankfurt UAS translate sustainability into everyday university life?
By way of active example. By genuinely embodying sustainability in practice. Not 100% perfection, but as best as can be. Papercups and soda water from major corporations are still around here though we have many mineral springs in Bad Vilbel. But sustainability is an important issue also at the administrative and organizational levels – or at least ought to be.
How and why should sustainability be a priority for Administration?
Well, we should be asking ourselves, for instance, which transport connections we’re setting in motion through the way we organize research and teaching. Or take project management. There are many worthwhile and rewarding projects. But for the most part they have a fixed term of two to four years. Then they’re abandoned – and with them great ideas fall along the wayside, concepts and people fade from view and are forgotten. Knowledge, commitment and opportunities for people are tossed into oblivion. For example, we have Project “Opportunity Building” to support children from non-academic families so they can begin a program of study. As a project of this nature requires continuity, the fight for its survival is ongoing.
So sustainability goes well beyond ecology then?
Yes. And to make sustainable knowledge management work you need more time and room for thought and discourse at the University. We often find ourselves running behind the curve at a mind-boggling pace here. Why do we give ourselves only half a year when a whole year would be needed? Speed has become our bugbear. Sustainability for me, especially at a university, means taking more time to reflect and understand – to preserve and transmit valuable knowledge.
Are you satisfied with the process through which the Sustainability Strategy was developed?
Prof. Dr. Klärle, our Vice President, is a key catalyst with a positive mental attitude. I am most hopeful that the Strategy will be implemented – and also admit to being genuinely surprised by the way the strategy-building process has been coming along. Such a diverse array of people at the University are joining in the discourse and taking sustainability seriously in its full thematic breadth. They are not narrowing it down to saving energy and buying regional products. That is heartening because sustainable knowledge and project management are at risk of becoming forgotten among all the technical issues skimming the surface of the sustainability debate. We have to let out some of the pressure. Only the other day, I was saying to an acquaintance of mine that we need to decelerate. And her response was, If I hear the word “decelerate” one more time... We need to practice doing without. For me this means, to start with: not to pounce on every project and every funding opportunity that comes along but instead to see worthwhile things through to the end or else to further develop and perpetuate projects, for example, where it makes sense to do so.
What things do you practice doing without in your private life?
I make it a point not to fly. Which is no biggie for me considering my fear of flying [laughs]. In our household we have significantly reduced our electricity consumption, and we’re driving our economical car proverbially into the ground. We ride our bikes to work, and we combine rail and bicycle travel when we’re on vacation. And I have restored a half-timbered house in my home village using all-natural building materials.
Good that you mentioned villages. Are urbanites losing sight of rural areas and their legitimate interests?
Thinking in terms of black and white is a sign of our times. The world is simpler when we paint it with a black-and-white brush. But then we would not be doing justice to reality. It’s easy for someone in Frankfurt, who has the complete range the mobility options at their disposal, to preach to others about how they should do without certain forms of mobility. This morning, the idea came to me to launch a project – for example, working together with faculty and students to develop a sustainability strategy for my home village with its dilapidated houses clustered in the village center. And in point of fact there is another very essential condition for sustainability: social responsibility and public spirit.
Why is sustainability inseparably interlinked with social responsibility and public spirit?
Social responsibility and public spirit are – particularly in a heavily individualized society – closely intertwined. It is incumbent on us to act responsibly, and by the same measure we mustn’t lose sight of how we our dependent on others. The so-called contrarians – or “free thinkers” (who are not really thinking at all, as far as I’m concerned) – who are taking to the streets to protest the imposition of rules to contain the Corona pandemic, are confusing personal freedom with thoughtlessness. Freedom means also the freedom to share responsibility. Sustainability will succeed only if we all accept and shoulder responsibility – each for themselves and concurrently for others, as well as for the collective whole.