Antje Boetius creates a socio-polit­i­cal dialogue of science on climate change

Hector Fellow Antje Boetius advocates an expanded climate protec­tion. She is one of the authors of a 2019 state­ment by the Leopold­ina National Academy of Sciences. The title of the publi­ca­tion is "Climate Targets 2030: Pathways to a Sustain­able Reduc­tion of CO2 Emissions." This active role is related to her research, because, as she pointed out in a recent inter­view: Climate change is affect­ing even the deepest ocean regions.

She also sees dialogue with society as part of her mission. In this regard, the deep-sea researcher tries to explain, what impact humans have on nature and how these changes are already visible today, in order to initi­ate a discourse on socio-polit­i­cal decisions.

She also visits schools and intro­duces students to the fasci­na­tion of the deep-sea with its multi­tude of extra­or­di­nary and excit­ing creatures and life forms as well as their inter­ac­tions. She discusses a lot with the pupils, some of whom ask extremely diffi­cult questions. In a recent article, she recounts how one pupil asked the question, "To which court does a fish actually go when we ruin its habitat?".

Antje Boetius notes that the overar­ch­ing problem of dealing with nature in schools, includ­ing the issue of the oceans, is too narrowly focused on the subject of physi­cal connec­tions and individ­ual behav­ior. However, the topic is also suitable, for example, to compre­hen­sively develop aspects of politics, econom­ics and inter­na­tional cooper­a­tion in civics, history and geogra­phy, says Boetius. In this context, it is impor­tant to provide teach­ers with appro­pri­ate train­ing and contin­u­ous educa­tion, she said.

In polit­i­cal discus­sions, that are so relevant, a lot of facts are needed in order to under­stand, that climate change and also environ­men­tal degra­da­tion are connected to other major global problems, which is why the work of scien­tists like Antje Boetius is so important.