Category: Lan Use / Rural and Urban Development

The “Zurück zur Erde” initiative, co-organized by Goethe Institute and the Indo-German Centre for Sustainability (IGCS), aims to promote sustainability and raise awareness about the United Nations’ 17 Sustainability Goals among students and teachers. The initiative encourages them to adopt a modern, balanced lifestyle and become more mindful of sustainable practices.

The first workshop, held online on March 22nd and 27th, 2023, was mentored by Dr. Christoph Woiwode, a visiting faculty member at the IIT Madras and IGCS Postdoc. The workshop consisted of two 90-minute interactive online sessions and was attended by German-speaking school students in grades 9 to 11. The workshop focused on exploring participants’ personal perspectives and attitudes regarding human-nature relationships and examining social-cultural expressions of these relationships. Through activities, brief lectures, discussions, and individual self-reflection, participants engaged in a thoughtful and insightful exploration of sustainable practices. Activities were repeated in the second session, allowing for reflection in between.

The workshop yielded positive student outcomes. Some of the highlights are shown below. The project plans to conduct two more workshops focusing on sustainable energy use and sustainable water management in the near future.

Dr. Christoph Woiwode, Resident Visiting Faculty in the IGCS Landuse Area at IIT Madras, is now a part of a consortium of ten faculty members establishing an interdisciplinary Research Centre at IIT Madras in “Water and Sustainability.”

In its initial phase of three years, the starting financial endowment of the center will be close to 600,000 Euros for the establishment of its research program with a focus on achieving water, carbon, and nutrient circularity in urbanizing transformations. Dr. Woiwode will be co-leading with Prof Chella Rajan on the socio-political component of water and land-use governance to provide research about the water-food-energy nexus.

A core methodological design approach of the center is applying a transdisciplinary research design within the framework of real-world/living labs to produce solution-oriented and relevant outcomes toward sustainable and climate-resilient urban agglomerations in the Global South. This builds on previous research carried out on periurbanization in Chennai.