It is a warm and quiet afternoon in summer. Bees are busing themselves in the Ecological Botanical Garden in Bayreuth and an occasional breeze ripples the lush green leaves. But then – more and more people make their way through the Ecological Botanical Garden, around the Mediterranean greenhouses, over the sandy area outside, carrying bowls […]
Germany has been sued. Finally. These words may sound weird coming from the mouth of a person born in Germany. Let me explain, why I think this was about time. First things first. In the year 2016, the European Commission took legal action against Germany. The reason: The country did not show increasing effort to […]
Professor Karim-Aly Kassam is not a tall man. But when he enters the stage – in this case the stage is the room between a blackboard and a table in a muggy lecture room in the GEO building at the University of Bayreuth – he has all the attention of his audience. In a very […]
It is quite sunny on this day in the beginning of April. Severin Irl and Dagmar Hanz are sitting in their office at the department of Biogeography of the University of Bayreuth, good-humoured and well-tanned. No wonder – they just came back from their trip to the Canary Island La Palma, situated in the Atlantic […]
It requires a little luck and steadiness to reach Benjamin Von Wong. And it also requires a lot of organizational talent regarding the time difference between Germany and the US west coast. But when we finally “meet” via Skype, the 31-year-old photographer is a very interesting and dedicated interview partner and not really what one […]
In my last article, I wrote about palm oil and the problems with this substance found almost everywhere. Instead of only writing about the problems I decided to take action and have a closer look at how palm oil is influencing my daily life. So, let’s begin with the facts. To find out when I […]
Smoke swells from the thick, green canopy of Indonesian rainforests. Orphaned orangutans cry for their mothers who were killed in the bush fires. Local inhabitants, children, women, men are inhaling the yellow swaths, only protected by dirty, once white masks; the air is filled with almost invisible particles of ashes coming from the burning forests. […]
It has been a long time since a book has moved and touched me in such a way as “The history of bees” did. With this novel, the Norwegian author Maja Lunde has created a wonderful piece of art, she found just the right words to show us how much we depend on the little, […]
The view from Lions head over Cape Town. The South African metropole is one of the cities where development planning is happening. Picture: Dominik Müller[/caption]
By: Katharina Funk After weeks of planning, organising and waiting, the COP23 has finally begun! 19 GCE students have made their way from Bayreuth to Bonn for the first week of the climate conference and another 19 will come for the second week. They will participate in side events, negotiations, and – most importantly – […]
