Climate Change as a Crisis of Nature?

Event Type
Conference

Location / Date
Bonn, 12.06.2026 until 13.06.2026

Organizer

Émile Durkheim Research Unit: Crisis Analysis, University of Bonn, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS)

Climate change represents not only an environmental transformation but a profound social, cultural, economic, political, and legal crisis.
The conference is part of a series that began with the crisis sphere of “war”, exploring the question of its societal origins, and now turns to climate change as a “crisis of nature”, which we are interrogating in collaboration with IDOS.
This interdisciplinary conference examines how diverse epistemic traditions, governance regimes, economic structures, and normative frameworks shape both the perception and regulation of nature’s transformation.
Key themes include the Anthropocene as a conceptual challenge, climate scepticism and scientific authority, cross-cultural configurations of human–nature relations, the politicisation and economisation of nature (including emissions trading), the discourse on the rights of nature, and the philosophical implications of the Gaia hypothesis as a “Verrechtlichung” of nature.
Bringing together natural, social, and cultural sciences, the conference seeks to foster reflexive dialogue on the conceptual foundations of “nature” and to critically assess the conditions for collective action in the face of escalating global crisis and dramatic catastrophes.

Programme

Werner Gephart & Anna-Katharina Hornidge
Introduction

Christoph Antweiler
Keynote: Anthropocene – A Conceptual Earthquake for Established Concepts of Nature?

Werner Gephart
The Re-Sacralisation of Nature: Will it Save the World?

I. Climate Change as a Cultural Problem: The Cultural Significance of “Naturverhältnis”

Saida Mirsadri
Rethinking Human–Nature Relations in Islamic Thought under Ecological Crisis

Jean Carlo Rodríguez de Francisco
Nature for whom? Nature-based Solutions and Environmental Justice

Yousra Abourabi
Governance Challenges in Africa

II. Climate Change as a Governance Problem: The Politicization of Nature

Conrad J. Schetter
Global Risk, Conflicts, and the Impossible Global Risk Society

Anna-Katharina Hornidge
Keynote: Environmental Governance: Failures and Fallacies

Niklas Wagner, Claudia Hiepe, Melanie Coath, Thaynah Gutierrez Gomes and Nady Mahmoud
The Climate–Nature Nexus in the Triple COP Year: Discourses Shaping Practice across the Rio Conventions

Janet Laurence
On “Cassandra Birds”: Artist Talk

III. Climate Change as an Economic Problem: The Economization of Nature

Pierre Brunet
On the Rights of Nature

Ines Dombrowsky
Sustainable Development Scenarios: Reflections on Societal and Policy Assumptions

IV. Climate Change as a Legal-Normative Problem: Legislation and Moralization of Nature

TBA
The End of “Natural Law” and the Law of Nature

Daniel Grana-Behrens
What Nature? The Epistemological Crisis as an Ontological Crisis—From Anthropology to Sociology

Richard Münch
Keynote: Climate Change: The Culture of Modernity in Reflexive Self-Confrontation


Moderators
Adrian Hermann
Rapti Siriwardane-de Zoysa
Werner Gephart
 

Overview of Speakers

  • Werner Gephart is Director of the Emile Durkheim Unit: Crisis Analysis and the founder of Käthe Hamburger Kolleg Recht als Kultur.
  • Anna-Katharina Hornidge is Director of the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).
  • Christoph Antweiler is Senior Professor for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Bonn.
  • Saida Mirsadri is Research Associate at the Center for Comparative Theology and Social Issues (CTSI) at the University of Bonn.
  • Jean Carlo Rodríguez de Francisco is Senior Researcher at German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) for Ecological Economics.
  • Yousra Abourabi is Associate Professor of Political Science at Sciences Po Rabat, within the International University of Rabat (UIR) Morocco.
  • Conrad J. Schetter is Director of the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies (BICC).
  • Niklas Wagner is Post-Doctoral Researcher in the Environmental Governance and Transformation to Sustainability programme at IDOS.
  • Claudia Hiepe is Senior Policy Officer at the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) of Germany.
  • Melanie Coath is Principal Policy Officer and Climate Change lead at the RSPB.
  • Thaynah Gutierrez Gomes is Climate and Environmental Racism Advisor at Geledés – Black Women’s Institute in São Paulo, Brazil, and serves as the Executive Secretary of the Network for Antiracist Adaptation.
  • Nady Mahmoud is climate and nature expert working as Nature-Based Solutions and Restoration Lead with the High Level Climate Champions Team.
  • Janet Laurence is a Sydney-based Australian artist known for her multi-disciplinary work exploring the interconnection of all living things.
  • Pierre Brunet is Professor of Public Law at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
  • Ines Dombrowsky heads the Environmental Governance Department at IDOS and is a Honorary Professor at Leuphana University of Lüneburg.
  • Daniel Grana-Behrens is Senior Researcher and Cultural Anthropologist at the University of Bonn.
  • Richard Münch is Professor Emeritus known for his work in social theory, macrosociology, and the study of academic systems

 

Hinweis

Während unserer Veranstaltungen werden z.T. Foto- und/oder Filmaufnahmen gemacht, die für Zwecke der Veranstaltungsberichterstattung und allgemeinen Öffentlichkeitsarbeit in verschiedenen Medien veröffentlicht werden. Sie haben jederzeit das Recht, die Foto- oder Videograf*innen darauf hinzuweisen, dass Sie nicht aufgenommen werden möchten. / During our events photos and/or videos may be taken which may be published in various media for the purposes of documentation and PR activities. You have the right at any time to point out to the photographer or videographer that you do not want to be photographed or filmed.