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The Bonn Alliance for Sustainability Research (Bonn Alliance for short) is a network of six university and non-university research institutions in Bonn, Germany that have joined forces to pool and strengthen knowledge and expertise in the fields of sustainability research and sustainable development. The Bonn Alliance connects and supports partner institutions in their policy- and practice-relevant research on sustainability, which takes place in a dialogue between academia, business, and politics and extends from the local context to the global level.

Partnerinstitutions

The Bonn Alliance for Sustainability Research includes six partner institutions: BICC (Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies), the German Institute for Development and Sustainability (IDOS), the Hochschule Bonn-Rhein Sieg, University of Applied Sciences (H-BRS), the Institute for Environment and Human Security of the United Nations University (UNU-EHS) and the University of Bonn with its Center for Development Research (ZEF).

Origin

The Bonn Alliance for Sustainability Research was founded on November 15, 2017, at the 2017 UN Climate Change Conference (COP23) under the leadership of the University of Bonn with the aim of uniting and intensifying leading-edge competencies in sustainability research.

Funding

After its founding, the Bonn Alliance for Sustainability Research received start-up funding from the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (MKW), as well as from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for the pilot project "Digitainable - Digitalization and Sustainability".

Goals

The common goal of the Bonn Alliance for Sustainability Research is to scientifically support the implementation of the UN Agenda 2030 on a local and global level while critically engaging with it. To this end, it unites university and non-university, applied and basic research through its partner institutions with the aim of pooling and promoting knowledge and competencies in the field of sustainability research. This strong bundling of competencies and joint expertise of the Bonn research institutions strengthens the partners at the site in terms of an international sustainability competence center.

In September 2018, the Head Office of the Bonn Alliance was established to coordinate and support the cooperation of the partner institutions in joint research projects, training and education, transfer projects, and capacity building.

Research & Projects

On the occasion of its founding, the Bonn Alliance identified three strategic research priorities that were particularly relevant to the broad field of sustainability: "Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence", "Mobility and Migration", and "Bioeconomy." To implement these strategic research priorities, the Bonn Alliance created various research projects. In the time since its founding, the research focus of the Bonn Alliance has expanded to include additional topics and program lines within the field of sustainability research.

• Program line: "Sustainability - Looking beyond 2030"  
  • This program line is a cooperation with the initiative "Wellbeing, Sustainability and Equity (WiSE) Transformation" at UNU-EHS. The program line deals with future-oriented sustainability research beyond the year 2030 and the 2030 Agenda.  To this end, the Bonn Alliance organizes formats in the form of expert workshops, working groups, and dialogue events on the one hand, and supports projects of partner institutions on the other.

• Alternative Sustainabilities Working Group
  • The "Alternative Sustainabilities" working group is composed of scientists and practitioners from the field of sustainability and sustainable development. The aim of the working group is to identify, bring together and analyze "alternative" approaches to sustainability. This includes concepts and types of sustainability that are not yet represented in the current mainstream sustainability discourse.  To this end, the working group organizes lectures and workshops with the intention of increasing the visibility of the topic.

• Digitainable - Digitalization and Sustainability  
  • The research project "digitainable" took place from July 2020 to February 2021 with the help of start-up funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as a pilot project within the research focus area "Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence".
  • The aim was to understand the influence of digitalization and artificial intelligence on aspects of sustainability. To this end, various aspects of digitalization and artificial intelligence are systematically analyzed in regard to the indicators of the UN Agenda 2030.

• Bioeconomy in North Rhine-Westphalia: A study on the reorientation of the NRW bioeconomy strategy
  • This project was carried out from July 2020 to February 2021 as part of a cooperation between the Bonn Alliance and the Center for Development Research (ZEF). It was funded by the Ministry for Environment, Agriculture, Conservation and Consumer Protection of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (MULNV). As an objective, the project pursued the creation of a systematic overview of bioeconomy activities in North Rhine-Westphalia.  Additionally it aimed to analyze the expectations and ideas of the relevant actors regarding a revised bioeconomy strategy in NRW in order to identify thematic and regionalized approaches and needs and to address them specifically in the revised strategy.  

• Big Data and Artificial Intelligence - Risks and Challenges for Sustainable Societal Transformation with a specific Focus on Organized Violence and Violent Conflicts
  • In this project the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies (BICC) and the University of Bonn analyze the significance of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence with regard to organized violence and violent conflict, including the impact on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  The project is based on the results of a study by Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies (BICC).

• Expert-Workshop „Climate migration”
  • This workshop was held on June 11, 2019, in cooperation with the Institute for Environment and Human Security of the United Nations University (UNU-EHS) and the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) in Bonn, Germany.  The goal was to discuss the current state of research regarding the relationship between climate change, human mobility, and future research questions and challenges.

• Research mapping „mobility and migration”  
  • All partner institutions of the Bonn Alliance participated in a research mapping on the topic of "Mobility & Migration" between May and July 2020. Here, 20 experts provided insights into their study programs, short-term training programs and research activities in the field of mobility and migration.

• One Health and Digitalization  
  • This project was a collaboration with the Center for Development Research (ZEF) and its One Health Forschungskolleg and the Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, University of Applied Sciences (H-BRS) with its International Center for Sustainable Development (IZNE) and was funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (MKW). The concept of "One Health" is a cross-sectoral approach that takes an integrative health perspective on the intrinsic links between human, animal and environmental health.  Two core aspects that the project addressed were biodiversity in food and the challenge of reconciling different demands on the food industry.