CLIMATE AND EARTH
SYSTEM SCIENCES
Photo: UHH/Denstorf
9 December 2022
Photo: private
We are proud to announce the successful MSc thesis presentation of our SICSS member Théo Wittersheim
His thesis "Challenges in biodiversity conservation global goal setting" was supervised by Prof. Dr. Stefan Aykut (Universität Hamburg) and Dr. Eduardo Gresse (Universität Hamburg).
Théo investigated the challenges encountered in defining a new set of global goals for biodiversity. His research focused on the negotiations around the new Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, interviewing different stakeholders involved in the debate: policy-makers, NGO representatives, and scientists. Théo’s Thesis aimed to contribute to the overall research on global goal setting, with a particular focus on the difficulties in setting qualitative global goals. Based on the previous knowledge in that field, he built a framework to evaluate the quality of global goals, identifying 5 main dimensions: relevance, communicability, acceptability, implementability, and achievability of global goals. These criteria facilitated his analyses of the tradeoffs and the controversies happening in the biodiversity negotiations. Finally, Théo searched for limits of goal setting as an instrument for global governance within the case of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework..
Théo’s future plans?
In the future, Théo hopes to help imagining alternative development pathways in the search for a more sober society, potentially continuing his media creation project already underway. This media attempts to propose news analyses, experts interviews, and animated short videos, to popularize environmental science.