Sustainability Week 2025: Sustainability in the Spotlight

From 6 to 10 October, it's Sustainability Week at the University of Groningen! The Green Office warmly invites you to join us on this journey of discovery and be inspired by lectures, films, and music.

Sustainability is an important theme, both at the University of Groningen and in society as a whole, but these days it sometimes seems to fade into the background due to global crises such as wars, political developments, and conflict situations. And, at the national level, we also have to deal with a nitrogen crisis, a housing shortage, violence against women, polarization, and upcoming elections, to name just a few. All of this doesn't help us maintain a focus on sustainable development, even though many themes are directly or indirectly connected to sustainability. On the other hand, we're becoming accustomed to news about major polluters and more frequent forest fires, floods, droughts, and extreme weather due to climate change.

How do you maintain attention in this changing world for a theme that can have such an impact on all of us, and future generations?

Keynote Jaap Tielbeke: Green badgering or much-needed climate policy?

In the previous cabinet, it was still called a Minister for Climate and Green Growth. But infinite growth on a finite planet seems impossible. That was already the revolutionary message of the 1972 report "Limits to Growth" by the Club of Rome, which had a global impact. It was also widely read in the Netherlands: the paperback edition sold 250,000 copies.

In this lecture on Monday 6 October, climate journalist Jaap Tielbeke will demonstrate the impact of this report—but also how few of the original warnings were actually heeded. Should we blame each other for not heeding this primal warning? Or is it time for more "green badgering"?

Jaap Tielbeke has been deputy editor-in-chief of De Groene since December 2024. He studied international relations and philosophy before joining this weekly magazine as an editor in 2015. He writes mainly about ecological misery and attractive alternatives.

Want to know more about this year's program? Then click the button below. You can participate in various walks and a pub quiz, or immerse yourself in two selected films (with an introduction or discussion) and a concert of Soundtrack of the Plastic Age in the Forum, with an introduction by Gita Maas of the North Sea Foundation.

This year, the Green Office is collaborating with Studium Generale and Forum Groningen on several events.