CREDOLGT JOURNAL ON WEALTH CULTURE

SUSTAINABILITY | XXII 2016

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Contents | CREDO XXII 2016

Sustainability 04

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Portrait | Céline CousteauJust like her grandfather and her father before her, she’s campaigning for sustainable fishing, clean oceans and endangered peoples.

Portfolio | The sharing economyWhen possession becomes more of a burden than a blessing, owning is replaced by sharing. It represents quality of life of a different kind.

Portfolio | Earth Overshoot DayEvery year, the day in the calendar advances when humanity starts living beyond its ecological means.

Interview | Harald WelzerDespite a change in thinking across the world, environ- mental damage is still increasing. Forcing people to give up things is the wrong path to take, says sociologist and founder of the Futurzwei Foundation.

Essay | Religious traditionsReligions are probably one of the most sustainable phe-nomena that we know of in the whole history of mankind.

Report | Combating climate changeThe profit-motivated clearing of forest areas is one of the biggest climate killers. A small association of forest farmers on Java is showing that it’s possible to do things differently.

Masterpieces | Badminton CabinetA piece of furniture, created for eternity. More than 30 craftsmen from the Grand Ducal workshops in Florence took six years to make this cabinet back in the 18th century.

Literary choice | T.C. BoyleIs the fate of the Earth worth personal sacrifices? The US novelist T.C. Boyle tries to answer this question in his book “A Friend of the Earth.”

Carte Blanche | Daniel AbtThe popular opinion on the matter is clear: electric cars are a wet blanket. A young racing driver wants to change this image.

CREDO is also available online: www.lgt.com/credo

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CREDO | 03

Editorial

Thinking and acting in terms of generations is a code of behavior whose

origins lie far back in history. It’s also a privilege that brings duties with it.

Hans Carl von Carlowitz was certain of this when he developed the idea of

sustainability back in the early 18th century. This Saxon mining administra­

tor looked on with great concern at how there was “a lack of wood noticeable

everywhere, with poor precautions hitherto taken to ensure it is cultivated.”

Back then, wood was the most important raw material and source of energy.

Carlowitz appealed to “the wealthiest people,” saying that wood “should be

used in a continuing, stable and sustained manner because it is an indispen­

sable thing.” Today, the necessity to conserve our resources is more topical

than ever and demands that all of us act.

The sociologist Harald Welzer says it with quite unambiguous clarity in our

Interview here: “The world is set on a path that is radically nonsustainable.”

Even the inhabitants of the village of Terong on the island of Java have had

to experience this. Until just a few years ago, financial hardship forced them

to overexploit forest areas. In our Report, Christina Schott explains why

they are committed to environmental protection today. But it’s not just the

forest that needs protecting – the seas do too. And in our Portrait by Michael

Neubauer, we meet Céline Cousteau, the granddaughter of Jacques­Yves

Cousteau, who is now the third generation of her family to become an active

ambassador for the oceans.

I hope you enjoy reading the variety of articles in this issue.

H.S.H. Prince Philipp von und zu Liechtenstein

Chairman LGT

Dear Readers,

4 | CREDO

Portrait | Céline Cousteau

She feels alive when she’s underwater – and at the same time she has great respect for the creatures she encounters there: Céline Cousteau while diving.

Portrait | Céline Cousteau

CREDO | 05

Text: Michael Neubauer | Photos: Christian Breitler, Çapkin van Alphen – Cause­

Centric Productions, Michael Clark Photography, Keystone – The Cousteau Society

Like her grandfather and father before her, she’s fighting for sustainable fishing

and clean oceans, and campaigning to protect threatened peoples. We meet with

the filmmaker and environmental activist Céline Cousteau.

Céline Cousteau climbs gingerly up the steep wooden staircase into the second floor of the

tower where there’s a small, round room with stone walls. She apologizes for the dust on the

furniture. A wooden dolphin stands on the narrow desk, looking like it’s been stranded there.

Next to it there’s a pile of film scripts by her father Jean­Michel. Cousteau pushes open the

metal window shutters and looks into the distance, over the Mediterranean Sea. “I can work

with absolute concentration here,” she says. From underneath the desk, she pulls out an old

diving regulator once used by her famous grandfather, the marine explorer Captain Jacques­

Yves Cousteau. She puts the antique device to one side and points to two black hard disks.

They contain the films of three expeditions to the Vale do Javari region in the Brazilian state

of Amazonas.

An ambassador for the

Oceans

It’s December, and in the coming weeks Céline Cousteau,

now 43, will withdraw regularly to this tower, a former wind­

mill, to edit her latest documentary film on her computer. But

she will also be able to get a little peace up here after turbulent

months of travel to New York, Amazonas, Monaco, the Bahamas,

Dubai, London, Paris and Nice. She was busy with film shoots

– both with her own team and with her father – going diving,

with film festivals, environmental programs for schools, con­

ferences, lectures, appearances as a company ambassador and

visits to family. Now her goal is to take some long, deep breaths

in Sanary­sur­Mer.

Cousteau spends six months of the year – her winters and

summers – in this idyllic little town of 16 000 souls, situated

on the French Mediterranean between Marseille and Toulon.

The other half of the year is spent north of New York in the

Hudson Valley. Cousteau climbs back down the tower staircase

and goes out into the garden. There are pine trees here, and a

pool that’s covered over with wooden boards. “It’s very deep –

my grandfather used it to test his underwater cameras.” Behind

a wire fence, the land descends steeply down to the sea. Her

grandparents built their house here after the Second World War,

next to a historic mill. It stands directly above a cliff and has a

heavenly view of the sky and the sea.

Back in the living room, she sinks into the brown sofa that

stands in front of the wide windows. Photos are framed on the

walls, most of them of her grandmother. “This one’s my favorite

picture of my grandparents,” she says. It shows Jacques­Yves

Cousteau in his navy uniform alongside his wife in a bikini.

Besides them are their sons Jean­Michel and Philippe­Pierre.

Philippe­Pierre died in an accident in 1979. “They often used to

hold parties here in the living room, because there was a great

sense of joy after the war was over,” says Céline. The house has

hardly changed since then. There’s a map of Africa on the wall,

behind which you can still find the recess where grandfather

Cousteau always placed his projector when showing his guests

the documentary films that made him so famous.

06 | CREDO

Portrait | Céline Cousteau

Céline Cousteau’s favorite picture of her grandparents in the living room of the house in Sanary-sur-Mer:

Jacques-Yves Cousteau as we know him: in his red woolen cap.

“Mom, I’m a policeman!” Félix rushes in on his balance bike

and rides to his play corner where there’s a small blackboard

with a boat drawn on it. “Put your helmet on, my angel!” says

Céline Cousteau to her four­year­old before he disappears out­

side with his father. The front door has a porthole, and above

it you can read: “Baobab.” Grandmother Cousteau named the

house after the African tree.

The sound of the seaThis “Baobab” house is now home to a third generation of

Cousteaus. A name that even today seems to echo with the

sound of the sea, conjuring up images of ocean adventures

and environmental activism. Céline’s grandfather Jacques­Yves

Cousteau (1910–1997), the marine explorer and TV star, ful­

filled a dream of his with this house in Sanary. His trademark

was his red woolen cap, the one he wore in the 1960s and ’70s

in the legendary TV series “The Undersea World of Jacques

Cousteau” as captain of the Calypso, a decommissioned British

minesweeper that he had converted into a research station.

CREDO | 07

The former corvette captain and co­inventor of the diving

regulator CG 45, patented in 1945 and called the “aqua lung,”

introduced an audience of millions to the underwater world.

He made over 100 films and published dozens of books. And he

fought against pollution and the plundering of the seas. Céline’s

father Jean­Michel is carrying on this work as a marine explorer,

environmental campaigner and film producer. He has also

founded the Ocean Futures Society, whose aim is to sensitize

people to the importance of the oceans. He lives in Santa Bar­

bara in California. Céline’s brother Fabien is also a filmmaker

and lives in New York, where he campaigns to protect sharks.

And Céline’s mother Anne­Marie worked as a photographer and

often went along on their research travels.

So they’re a real family business in the service of the oceans.

But Céline’s biography suggests she had initially wanted to set

herself free of her family inheritance. She was born in California

in 1972 and grew up in France and the USA. She initially studied

psychology, holds a Master’s in International and Intercultural

Whoever wants to visit Céline Cousteau has to climb steps to reach her. A road lined with little Catholic shrines leads to the top of a cliff in Sanary-sur-Mer where her famous grandfather built a house after the war. It’s not visible here; it’s hidden behind the pine trees to the left of the white building.

Portrait | Céline Cousteau

Cousteau’s lecture appearances with her short films and

photos whisk away her audiences to faraway places. Here in

Paris, too, they were spellbound as they watched her nature

shots. One film sequence showed a young humpback whale

whose tail fin got caught in a 550­pound fishing net of a cutter

(which was probably fishing illegally). It was severely injured.

At the time, Cousteau and her team were in the Juan Fernández

Archipelago, working on a twelve­part documentary series for

Chilean TV. They heard a radio distress call sent out by a fisher­

man who’d discovered the entangled whale nearby. Cousteau’s

team decided to help. A diver used a knife to cut through the

net, one strand after another, while Céline filmed it all. After two

hours the whale was free again. If the divers hadn’t been there,

it would have perished.

“We human beings injure, damage and destroy our environ­

ment, over and again, but we are also capable of developing great

courage and of changing things for the better,” said Cousteau,

adding: “Change begins in our heart.” The audience, moved, ap­

plauded for a long time. Cousteau speaks fluent English, French

and Spanish and feels as at home on stage as her grandfather

used to be in front of the cameras. She’s a storyteller, she says;

she’s a voice for others. “I want to get people to listen to those

who fight for the environment every day, but who – unlike me –

don’t have a stage to do it from.”

Learning from grandpa Sometimes she feels frustrated at these events, when time after

time she’s introduced with a reference to her legendary grand­

father. If you want to sum up someone, then you don’t start with

their grandparents, but with what they actually do themselves,

says Cousteau. “But on the other hand it’s normal that people

latch onto something they know.” And of course she knows that

her name is an asset, and that it invokes a sense of trust when it

comes to environmental topics and compassion. “That’s also an

honor for me.”

She remembers well the first time in her life that she went

diving. It was with her grandfather. She was nine years old, and

Jacques­Yves Cousteau went out with her into the open sea

near Monaco. Her diving lesson lasted only a few minutes. Fins,

a diving mask – “Does it all fit?” he asked. Then he helped her

with the air tank and the mouthpiece and explained how to

breathe. “It was no more difficult for me to learn than writing

the letter A.” He held her hand. At some point she let go

and dived down, fascinated by the beauty of this underwater

world and by the pleasant feeling of moving in the water. They

collected sea urchins that they inspected together back on

Management, trained as a goldsmith, then visited Costa Rica

as an intern and ended up working there as a travel guide.

“My parents let me do what took my fancy,” she says.

But years later she began working with her father – such as

on his TV documentary series “Ocean Adventures” (2006–2009).

That’s when she too developed a passion for the sea. Cousteau

founded her own nonprofit organization in 2012: CauseCentric

Productions. She campaigns today for sustainable fishing and

clean oceans, and for greater protection for coral reefs and

threatened peoples. In her publicity photos you see her in scuba

fins, hiking boots and even business suits. “I want to inspire

people so that they can feel a connection to what’s happening on

the planet.” CauseCentric also supports smaller environmental

organizations and their causes with films and photos. “Of course

I’m aware that my name is a big help in this.”

Getting people to listenAt the United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Paris

in 2015, one of the many podia featured members of indigenous

tribes from the USA and Canada. They criticized the destruction

of their living environments, the pollution of their rivers and

glacier shrinkage. Politicians talked about smog in Beijing and

China’s environmental policies. Then the moderator announced

that Céline Cousteau would give the closing statement: “Please

join me in welcoming the granddaughter of the legendary

Jacques­Yves Cousteau.”

Dressed elegantly in a dark blouse and cloth trousers, Cous­

teau took the stage and picked up the microphone. She offered

a commentary to the photos on the screen behind her – shots of

her taking photos while diving, then photos of penguins in the

Antarctic and of whales. She enthused about being able to dive

near these creatures. You feel very small, she said, “but very

much alive and full of respect.” And for her, whale songs are the

most beautiful lullabies you can imagine.

08 | CREDO

“I want to inspire people so that they can feel a connection to what’s happening on the planet.”

the boat. But Cousteau didn’t just learn diving from her grand­

father. She also inherited his boldness when it comes to visiting

dangerous regions.

Return to the Javari Valley She needs that boldness in her latest project. Five indigenous

tribes in the Vale do Javari in Amazonas state have asked her

to make a documentary film about them: about their culture,

their knowledge of the rainforest, their everyday life and their

worries. The Javari Valley is believed to have the biggest number

of people anywhere who have had no contact with the outside

world. Cousteau visited the region back in the early 1980s when

she was still a child, along with her grandfather. Now Céline

wants to help the indigenous population by making people aware

of their way of life and their problems. Because illegal loggers,

fishermen, gold hunters, oil prospectors and drug smugglers are

threatening their existence – not least through bringing disease

with them. “It’s about helping them to survive.”

Over the course of three expeditions in the past three years,

Cousteau and her five­person team have carried out interviews

with several members of these tribes that altogether number

With her film camera in the Brazilian jungle. When she was just a child, Céline Cousteau already traveled with her grandfather to this region in Amazonas state. Several years ago, indigenous tribes in the Javari Valley asked her to make a documentary film about them, their culture and their problems. It should be finished this coming fall.

CREDO | 09

roughly 4000 people. They have been contacted several times

since the 1970s – but there are other tribes that to this day live

in complete isolation. Cousteau’s crew filmed themselves at

work, including their difficult journey across the water to reach

the settlement. Her documentary film should be finished by the

fall of 2016. Cousteau is also planning an exhibition, a photo

book, materials for schools and lectures on the topic. In order

to realize all this, she spends a lot of time hunting for sponsors

when she’s not traveling.

The chief speaksOn one of her earlier visits to the indigenous tribes of the

Amazon, it became clear to her what the abstract word “sustain­

ability” really means. She was sitting with the chief of the Matis

in Brazil. This is a tribe that wasn’t visited by representatives

of the Fundação Nacional do Índio until the 1970s (that’s the

state organization tasked with protecting indigenous peoples in

Brazil). The tribe later came into contact with loggers and latex

gatherers. The tribe members were infected with diseases such

as influenza, and these cases rapidly developed into epidemics

in which many Matis died. But they have nevertheless managed

to survive to this day.

10 | CREDO

Cousteau asked the chief to what extent the people in the

rainforest live sustainably. “He looked at me and said: ‘I don’t

understand what you mean’,” recalls Cousteau. She tried to

explain the concept to him. He only shook his head and said:

“When I cut down a tree, I plant a new one. If I go hunting I

only kill what I need for my family to survive until tomorrow.”

Only taking what we need, and not destroying your own gar­

den: sustainability for Cousteau means returning to our roots.

It’s about being convinced that we have to live in balance with

our environment. “If we don’t do this, then in the long term we

won’t survive.” We can all play our part in this – by separating

our garbage for recycling, by saving energy and water, by sup­

porting environmental groups and by consuming less.

Corporate worldsCousteau pulls out all the stops when it comes to the environ­

ment. She is a member of the Global Agenda Council on Oceans

at the World Economic Forum in Davos. And she also tries to

champion her cause as a speaker and as a corporate ambassador.

Some firms even give a portion of their profits to her projects.

She’s active as a guest designer for Swarovski – a company

that uses sustainable hydraulic power for its energy­intensive

production of precision­cut crystal glass at its site in the Tyrol.

She also works for the outdoor shoe company Keen Footwear,

and advertises sustainable tourism through the TreadRight

Foundation of The Travel Corporation. All this is connected

to her environmental work. “We’re all consumers and buyers,”

she says. She wants access to the customers and employees of

such companies. She was a brand ambassador for the cosmetics

company La Prairie for seven years because she wanted to

support a particular cream – one for which the company is pro­

curing its ingredients from marine plants that are cultivated on

land in a controlled marine environment. That way, the sensitive

ecosystem of the oceans isn’t endangered.

Portrait | Céline Cousteau

Palm trees and the Mediterranean: Céline Cousteau and her partner Çapkin van Alphen on an afternoon stroll – their son Félix is speeding ahead on his balance bike.

“Sanary is my haven of peace. And I need it because my life is very busy.”

CREDO | 11

Taking deep breaths in SanaryCousteau closes the door of “Baobab” behind her. She walks

along the little street, past the chapel of Notre­Dame de Pitié

where her parents got married. A narrow path leads down into

the town. It is lined with little Catholic shrines, cactuses, mi­

mosas and rosemary. Down in the harbor of Sanary, the boats

and their masts are swaying in the water, and fishermen are

selling gilthead, squid and sea bass. Seagulls are screeching.

Félix comes towards her, accompanied by his father, Cousteau’s

partner, Çapkin van Alphen. Van Alphen is a cameraman and

photographer and does the media work for her organization.

“Sanary is my haven of peace. And I need it because my life is

very busy,” says Céline. Sometimes she goes diving off the coast

here – she only has to go down the steep steps near her house

and she can slip straight into the water. She has family roots in

Sanary, she says, more than in the USA. She walks past the little

street with the diving museum where Jacques­Yves Cousteau is

also remembered. Sanary has a primary school named after her

father, and her own son will probably go there one day.

How does having a child change the life of an adventuress

who’s used to traveling the world? Of course Félix has changed

her life, she says. “I love adventures, but since Félix was born,

every journey is planned more precisely than before.” And

whenever possible, she takes him along, too.

The sea is calm today. Cousteau laughs when it’s pointed out

to her that the French word for water is also in her name – “eau.”

Well, water is a part of her biography, she says. “But it’s part of

everyone, regardless of your name. We’re all linked to it.”

www.causecentric.org

www.celinecousteau.com

www.tribesontheedge.com

Michael Neubauer works as a freelance journalist in Paris and is a member

of the correspondent network weltreporter.net. He used to be the political

editor and Strasbourg correspondent of the “Badische Zeitung” in Frei-

burg im Breisgau in Germany. He was awarded the Franco-German Prize

for Journalism in 2002. In 2004, he was awarded a German-Northern

European Journalist’s Bursary by the International Journalists’ Programmes

in Copenhagen.

“Of course I’m aware that my name is a big help in my work,” says Céline Cousteau. It invokes a sense of trust when it comes to environmental topics – thanks to dedication of her grandfather and her father.

12 | CREDO

Portfolio | The sharing economy

To own or not to own is no longer the question.

You just have to be able to share.

On average, a car stands around unused for 23 hours a day. An

electric drill is ordinarily used for only a few minutes per year.

A lawn mower spends 99 percent of its time in the basement.

A general shift in attitudes to life, coupled with the digital tech­

nologies offered by Web 2.0 and social media, has given new

impetus to the idea of sharing. For many people under 30, own­

ership has lost its appeal. It’s more of a burden than a blessing.

They want quality of life instead of ownership. So they don’t buy;

they share. They share their cars, their electric drills, their bikes

and even their lawn mowers and their surfboards. That saves

natural resources and energy, without any loss of quality of life.

Generation Y is growing up with the concept of sharing, thanks

to the Internet and social media. Exchanging information and

working together through cloud services are things they take

for granted. The US economist Jeremy Rifkin believes that these

new technologies will be the driving force for a general change

in values and a paradigm shift. With a “sharing economy” in a

cooperative community, a new economic system can develop.

MobilityCar sharing has existed for over 20 years and is more topical

than ever today. The automotive industry is complaining that

young people are turning away from cars. They aren’t moved

anymore by talk of horsepower and torque. A study conducted

by the Public Interest Research Group has shown that car own­

ership in the USA has been declining constantly since 2006.

Every year, fewer driver’s licenses are being issued, and fewer

miles driven. Even in Germany, historically a nation of car own­

ers, the number of new registrations of passenger cars has sunk

back to the level of the 1990s. Young people want mobility, but

often don’t want their own car anymore. So even automobile

manufacturers are getting into the car­sharing business. The

world’s biggest provider in this sector, however, is a company

that was founded by Antje Danielson from Germany and Robin

Case from the USA in the year 2000. They based their company

– Zipcar – on the car­sharing systems that already existed at

the time in Germany and Switzerland. Zipcar today has 900 000

members, including companies and universities, and they have

some 10 000 cars at their disposal across the USA and Canada

and in several European countries. These can be booked either

online or with a special Zipcar app.

www.zipcar.com

A home from homeTravelers who join hospitality networks don’t just find a mere

roof over their heads when they stay with other members. Pro­

viders such as CouchSurfing and BeWelcome put hospitality

center stage. But even those who don’t want to spend the night

as a budget traveler in their host's living room can find a home

from home with others, such as through the online house­swap

provider HomeLink. It’s the world’s oldest network of house ex­

changers, and its database has 13 500 homes on offer. It won’t

surprise anyone to learn that it started in the USA – but who

would have thought that even the then US President Jimmy

Carter and his wife Rosalynn went on a house exchange back

in 1976, swapping their home on their peanut farm in Plains,

Georgia, with the house of a family in Recife in Brazil?

www.couchsurfing.com

www.bewelcome.org

www.homelink.org

Sharing the math These days, almost every household has a computer – at least

in the developed world. Their usage probably corresponds

roughly to that of cars – which, as we have seen, spend most

of their time standing around. But if you link up a lot of small

computers all over the world, you can attain immense computa­

tional power. This is just what BOINC makes possible, a software

Sharing is the new owningText: Manfred Schiefer

CREDO | 13

the innovation process. The success of the online encyclopedia

Wikipedia, which is funded by donations and written by vol­

unteer authors, enables us to access the most comprehensive,

up­to­date knowledge, but it’s also cost several people their

jobs at the companies that produce commercial encyclopedias.

Even the venerable Encyclopædia Britannica, founded in 1768,

shifted to a digital­only format in 2012.

One of the most recent platforms for sharing information

was prompted by Emma Watson, the British actress and UN

Women Goodwill Ambassador. On “Our Shared Shelf,” she aims

to discuss a different book every month. Appropriately, Watson’s

feminist reading circle is based at GoodReads, a San Francisco

platform for sharing information about books.

www.goodreads.com

platform for shared computing that has been developed at the

University of California, Berkeley. At present, almost 250 000

people have placed their unused CPU time at the platform’s

disposal to do research into diseases, to study global warming,

to create a 3D model of the Milky Way and to support many

other research projects. And today, even smartphones can be

used to share computational power.

www.boinc.berkely.edu

KnowledgeThe common use of resources is just one aspect of the sharing

economy. Sharing knowledge and experiences is becoming ever

more important too. Many companies use social media platforms

such as Facebook and Twitter to detect upcoming trends and to

improve their offerings. Today, users are also being integrated in

A typical car sits idle for 23 hours a day. It needs two parking spaces – one at its point of departure, and the other at its destination. A shared car can take the place of up to eight private vehicles.

14 | CREDO June 28, 2030

August 13, 2015

August 28, 2010

September 3, 2005

Oct

ober

4, 2

000

Oct

ober

10,

199

5

Oct

ober

13,

199

0

Nove

mbe

r 6

, 1985

Nove

mbe

r 3, 1

980November 28, 1975

December 23, 1970

June 28,

2030Text: Sidi Staub

Portfolio | Earth Overshoot Day

Every year, the Global Footprint Network

calculates the date of Earth Overshoot Day.

This is the date in the calendar when the re­

sources consumed across the world have ex­

ceeded the Earth’s capacity to generate them. In

other words, from this day until the end of the

year, the population of the Earth is living beyond

its means in ecological terms. What applies to an

individual also applies to humanity as a whole:

if you spend more than you earn, you’ll either

have to go into debt, or use up your savings. On

a global level, the consequences of this “debt

burden” are to be seen, for example, in the in­

crease of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,

in natural disasters such as droughts and floods,

and in species extinction. It was in 1970 that

humanity first went into ecological deficit. If we

carry on as hitherto, we will reach the “halfway

point” 14 years from now. The Global Footprint

Network has calculated that Earth Overshoot

Day in 2030 will fall in the middle of the year.

From that moment onwards we would be using up

the capacity of two Earths every year – while still

only having the one at our disposal, of course.

CREDO | 15June 28, 2030

August 13, 2015

August 28, 2010

September 3, 2005

Oct

ober

4, 2

000

Oct

ober

10,

199

5

Oct

ober

13,

199

0

Nove

mbe

r 6

, 1985

Nove

mbe

r 3, 1

980November 28, 1975

December 23, 1970

Source: Global Footprint Network

CREDO | 15

16 | CREDO

“Perhaps we do have a chance for a better life”

Interview | Harald Welzer

Interview: Mathias Plüss | Photos: Christian Breitler

The world is set on a radically nonsustainable course,

says the German sociologist Harald Welzer. Wake­up

calls and abstract environmental goals can change

nothing about this. What we really need are initiatives

that make it easier on people instead of forcing them

to give up things.

CREDO: What do you understand by “sustainability”?

Harald Welzer: I keep to the classical definition. To me, sus­

tainability means we should not consume more than can grow

back again.

Often, people talk about the three pillars of sustainability:

the economic, the social and the environmental.

I’m no fan of that, because in practical terms it’s a catastrophe.

In our society, economics have primacy. If we apply this fact to

sustainability, we get a bizarre situation in which concepts are

suddenly regarded as sustainable that actually run contrary to

environmental sustainability: for example, so­called sustainable

economic growth.

So doesn’t sustainable growth exist?

For me, this concept is illogical. For 250 years, our growth

economy has been a social and economic success story, but it’s

regrettably leading us into an environmental catastrophe. I fear

that having the one means excluding the other.

Sustainability is a buzzword. Everyone wants to act

sustainably today.

There isn’t a single corporate mission statement without the

word. Even a company like Porsche publishes sustainability

reports today.

So do you think it’s a hackneyed concept?

It’s completely hackneyed. Basically, it’s unusable. Besides, it’s

extremely unsexy. Sustainability – when you hear the word, you

don’t exactly think: “Oh, that’s wonderful!” It’s got an unpleasant

aftertaste to it.

You’ve written: “All fundamental developments in sustain-

ability are going in the wrong direction in all societies on

the globe.” Is the situation really that bad?

The world is set on a path that is radically nonsustainable. In

many countries, living space is increasing, people are swapping

bikes for cars, vegetarian food for meat. The rate of destruction

is growing, the process is accelerating. In Europe, too, the con­

sumption of resources is rising.

Many people feel that they’re living sustainably, though they

are actually consuming more and more. How does this false

self-perception come about?

That’s an interesting point. Often it’s said that this is a kind of

schizophrenia, but I don’t believe that. What’s really decisive

is how modern societies react when they’re confronted with a

problem. They don’t solve the problem, but instead create an

institution to deal with it.

Could you give us a concrete example?

In 1972, the “boundaries of growth” were recognized for the first­

ever time. In the 40 years since then, our environmental aware­

ness has grown immensely. But over the same time period, the

size of our ecological footprint has multiplied many times. How

is that possible? It comes about because we’ve created more

and more institutions to deal with the problem, giving merely

the impression that we’re doing a lot in aid of sustainability.

“To claim that economic growth and nature conservation aren’t contradictory is like trying to cure someone by faith healing”: Harald Welzer in a forest in Potsdam.

18 | CREDO

Why?

Because we know exactly where traffic congestion comes from:

too many cars. But instead of reducing their number, we set up

an institution. It’s business as usual, but then we add something

extra to it – that’s utterly typical of our society. We add to the

costs and complexity of a thing, just when we ought to be re­

ducing them. Reduction is something that is completely foreign

to the nature of our system.

Can you give us an example of how a society has learned to

give up something?

I can’t think of any. People always talk about the hole in the

ozone layer and the rapid abolition of CFCs. But this was

only possible because substitute materials were available. If it

had meant the end of the aerosol can, we would hardly have

managed this.

That all sounds pretty devoid of hope.

All the same, there are examples of serious social change. Just

think of smoking. When I was a child, people smoked on TV, in

cars, in trains, in planes and in restaurants – at the same table

where you were eating. That would be completely unthinkable

today. So there are certain areas where perceptions and behav­

ior can alter very rapidly.

Can you at least see some signs of a shift towards

sustainability?

On an everyday level there are lots of cases where there is an

impetus towards change. Our foundation is gathering positive

examples, and it’s incredible what’s happening at the moment.

For example?

Lots of repair cafés are being set up – places where you can

go and have stuff repaired instead of throwing it away. I think

that this has less to do with sustainability than with people

getting sick of our hyperconsumption. They feel overwhelmed.

By becoming part of a repair café initiative, they get back some

of their autonomy. That’s the secret. It’s not about sustainability,

but about being in charge of your own life.

Your foundation is called “Futurzwei” – “Future Perfect” in

English. Why this name?

In grammatical terms it’s precisely about the “future perfect.”

People have this fascinating ability to imagine themselves in

the future – and then to look back from this imaginary point

to see how they might have got there. It’s specifically this that

Futurzwei is trying to achieve: bringing the future back into the

sustainability discourse.

What institutions are you talking about?

Environmental ministries, environmental institutes, professorial

chairs, degree courses, and all possible laws and councils. An

incredible number of things are being measured and evaluated.

One of my favorite examples is the chair for traffic congestion

research in Duisburg – it’s totally absurd.

“On an everyday level there are lots of cases where there is an impetus towards change, and it’s incred­ible what’s happening at the moment.”

Harald Welzer lives with two young cats in a house that doesn’t use up any energy for heating.

Interview | Harald Welzer

CREDO | 19

Why bring it back – had we lost it?

Yes. Normally, we do exactly the opposite of future thinking. We

see our current problems and try to change the present. And so

we always end up optimizing. But we don’t see that we might

be optimizing the wrong thing. For example, we’re making cars

ever more efficient. But we overlook the fact that they’re getting

bigger and bigger and that this negates the possibility of achiev­

ing a positive effect.

In his book “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed,”

the American geographer Jared Diamond has shown that

societies – when faced with environmental crisis – don’t

change their old strategies but in fact intensify them. In

other words, they use up their last resources even quicker.

If people perceive the present to be crisis­ridden, they concen­

trate on conserving it. If something is disintegrating, we try to

hold it together. Notions of the future have completely disap­

peared from our way of thinking.

You’re a big critic of growth. Would you like to get rid

of capitalism?

Renouncing growth doesn’t automatically mean renouncing cap­

italism. Since the financial crisis we’ve learned that basic eco­

nomic truths can be suspended, but capitalism happily keeps on

functioning. Students of economics learn in their first semester

that our system is based on interest payments. But for a good

while now we’ve been living without interest, and the system

still hasn’t collapsed.

So could you imagine capitalism without growth?

Why not? The idea of growth is relatively new. It doesn’t even

occur in the classics, and even later, growth was never regarded

as a goal, but as a means to establish peace in societies.

Prosperity for all?

Yes, that was the famous motto of Ludwig Erhard, the father of

the German economic miracle. But even he didn’t contemplate

unlimited growth. In his book he reflects on the notion that ma­

terial growth isn’t necessarily linked to an increase in happiness.

And that societies like ours have to think in good time about how

to carry on after growth. That’s very interesting, and at the same

time it shows the lack of imagination among today’s economists.

Of course, you first need growth to create adequate living con­

ditions. But societies like ours have long had much too much of

everything. I think it’s a sign of the complete failure of the eco­

nomic sciences that no one is coming up with new ideas.

Does economic growth have to go hand in hand with an

increased consumption of energy and resources?

Yes. Anything else would mean believing in magic. When the UN

Capitalism without growth? To Harald Welzer, it’s not a crazy idea. “Even Ludwig Erhard believed we have to think in good time about how to carry on after growth.”

20 | CREDO

Interview | Harald Welzer

is more efficient than one that was made 20 years ago. But it’s

twice as big and contains twice as many products. That nullifies

everything.

What’s your opinion of the Paris climate agreement?

On a symbolic level it’s great. There’s never before been an

agreement among 195 countries. But it’s not yet done the slight­

est good for the climate. Social processes have their own logic.

They take time.

But if we take the two-degree target seriously …

Well, no one takes the two­degree target seriously. Anyone who

has a clue about it knows that we won’t get away with less than

three degrees. It was a huge mistake to formulate that two­

degree target in the first place. What happens when we don’t

achieve it? Do we then have to stop?

What would be the alternative?

People are interested in concrete topics, not abstract goals.

How does my child get to kindergarten? How can we improve

the quality of life in our district? These are things that concern

people. The debate about sustainability has to start on this level.

When asked how we should react to climate change, the British

eco-pioneer James Lovelock answered: “Enjoy it while you can.”

I also think we shouldn’t deprive people of their fun. One of my

favorite examples in our foundation is the Green Music Initiative

goals for sustainable development claim that economic growth

and nature conservation aren’t contradictory, it’s like trying to

heal someone through prayer. Of course they’re contradictory!

There isn’t a single example to prove otherwise.

But Germany’s economy has grown a lot since 1990, while

emitting less greenhouse gases.

Well, this calculation includes the closure of all the energy­

guzzling businesses in the old East Germany that weren’t eco­

nomically viable anyway. Besides, the countries of the West have

been outsourcing their problems. This means that they have a

great ecological balance sheet on paper. But in truth, 60 percent

of Switzerland’s consumption of natural resources takes place

outside the country.

Can’t we solve our environmental problems through

technology?

No. Our devices and appliances are supposedly becoming ever

more efficient, but it’s not true at all.

Why not?

Because we’re always getting more of everything.

So the individual device is getting more efficient, but now

I have two of them?

Yes, or a bigger one. The most extreme example is the refriger­

ator. When you look at the energy ratings, a refrigerator today

Welzer the sociologist wants to bring notions of the future back into the present debate.

CREDO | 21

Two of us have come from Switzerland to Potsdam to inter-

view you and take pictures of you. From an environmental

perspective, that’s pretty crazy.

Sure.

We should actually have turned this job down.

Exactly. And that’s why “actually” is the most important word

in our culture. We can reassure ourselves that we know some­

thing’s wrong, and yet at the same time we still do it. We do

what’s wrong, but “actually” remain in the right.

How do you personally deal with such contradictions? Surely

you also have to make compromises in your profession.

Compromise is a way of life for me. I try to take the train when

I can. I prefer old furniture and clothes. My house here doesn’t

use up any energy for heating. And yet my ecological footprint is

presumably far greater than that of the average person.

Why?

Because I do a ridiculous amount of traveling. And now and then

I use taxis and planes. Over the course of a year, it all adds up.

Since we’re failing on a small scale, isn’t it illusory to want

to create a world for nine or ten billion people that functions

sustainably?

That might well be. But we don’t know. I think it’s incredibly

interesting that societal developments can’t be divined in ad­

vance. Time and again, the most unexpected things happen –

the fall of the Berlin Wall, the financial crisis, the return of the

Cold War last year, and now these immense flows of refugees.

That’s why every prediction is pure fiction. I can’t say much else

except: perhaps we do have a chance for a better life. But we’d

have to move in the direction of “less instead of more.” And

we should make sure that we make a contribution ourselves,

even if it brings contradictions with it. After all, life consists

of contradictions.

from Berlin. That’s a group of people who organize environmen­

tally friendly festivals where the audience arrives in specially

chartered trains and the electricity at the events is generated

on the spot. But the key thing is: you are not supposed to notice

that it’s “green.” It’s about having fun, not about moralizing. You

can’t initiate societal change with morals.

So is the goal ultimately to get people to give up things, but

without them feeling any sense of loss?

Yes. Much of what is described as an act of “renunciation” is in

fact an act of relief. For example, I think it’s crazy that TV screens

are getting bigger and bigger. In the end, it’s like sitting in a

front­row seat at the movies, and everything you see is distorted.

Then there are the cars that don’t fit into our garage anymore.

They only cause us trouble and cost a lot of money. And then

there’s the huge loss of time involved! We know that people spend

more time comparing prices and reading test reports than they

actually spend consuming the products they’re checking up on.

If you free yourself of that, you’re not really giving up anything.

Why don’t people realize for themselves that their big TV isn’t

any use to them?

Because everyone around them says: You need the big one. And

when they buy it, they all say: “Hey, great screen.” That relieves

you of having to think for yourself. But if you keep your small

TV from 1982 because it does the trick for you, you have to keep

explaining yourself to people. Divergent behavior is stressful.

Prof. Dr. Harald Welzer comes from near Hanover and is a social psychologist

and a sociologist. He has held positions at various universities in Germany

and other countries and in 2012 became the Director of the Futurzwei

Foundation in Potsdam. This foundation collects and publishes sustainable

initiatives originating in civil society (www.futurzwei.org). Welzer is an

exceptional stylist and has written numerous books. He published his

thoughts on sustainability in the bestseller “Selbst denken. Eine Anleitung

zum Widerstand” (“Thinking for yourself: A guide to resistance,” 2013).

“People have this fascinating ability to imagine themselves in the future – and then to look back from this imaginary point to see how they might have got there.”

Interview | Harald Welzer

22 | CREDO

CREDO | 23

Essay | Religious traditions

The “Book of Books” and a belief in the Creation as

Revelation have a tradition stretching back thousands

of years. How can we explain this long­term success?

Katharina Ceming, a theologian and philosopher,

sketches out the ecosocial dimension of religions for us.

If we understand the concept of “sustainability” primarily as

“long­term impact,” then religions are probably one of the most

sustainable phenomena that we know in human history – regard­

less of whether we’re talking about the monotheistic traditions

or the religions of the East. One thing unites them all: their long

tradition and their recourse to holy texts that are still read to

this day, providing many people with norms by which to live.

What is the basis of this long­term impact?

It would be presumptuous to emphasize any single factor as

the only valid one. But I think that the great success of religions

is to be found in how they offer meaning and a way for us to live

our lives. As far as we can tell, no creature other than man asks

about the purpose of existence, nor endeavors to imbue it with

meaning. Religions are an attempt to answer this existential

question. And although the answers they give us might differ in

the detail, the various religions all have structural similarities.

TranscendenceAll great religions tell us that the meaning of existence lies in

self­transcendence. As long as man is solipsistic, knowing only

himself, he will not experience this meaning. He has to be

The alpha and

omega of sustainability

prepared to engage with something bigger and more compre­

hensive than himself. In almost all religions this means more

than just a vertically transcendent relationship with the divine

or absolute. It also means horizontal transcendence – in other

words, the idea that man can and should break out of his self­

centeredness by relating to his fellow men. Man can experience

meaning in his commitment to others and to the community.

Thus Christianity has always understood solidarity with

others not just as a purely ethical task in and of our world, but

as an opportunity to encounter God. It is a way of experienc­

ing transcendence, as is suggested in the teachings of Jesus:

“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my

brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:40). Even in

those religions in which the spheres of the absolute and the

human are not as closely interlinked as in Christianity, the path

to God or to the absolute is always a path of ecosocial respon­

sibility. Whoever acts unethically towards his environment and

his fellow men blocks his path to transcendence, no matter how

pious he might be.

The Golden RuleReligions use commandments to try and regulate how this in­

terconnectedness of man can best be organized and lived out.

Since man knows that the normative aspect of these command­

ments applies to everyone, he can trust that others will follow

them too. If we take a look at the holy texts of different religions,

we can see that the “Golden Rule” is their lowest common

Text: Katharina Ceming | Illustration: Markus Roost

24 | CREDO

Essay | Religious traditions

Katharina Ceming took her doctorate in philosophy and her postdoctoral

“Habilitation” in theology. She has been an extraordinary professor at the

University of Augsburg since 2009 and has been active as a freelance

consultant, lecturer and writer since 2011.

denominator. It’s summed up by the saying: “Do as you would be

done by.” Above and beyond this, the various holy texts naturally

have lots of other rules, and these can be very different indeed.

But with this Golden Rule, the great religions formulated some­

thing long ago that truly deserves the epithet “sustainable.” The

Golden Rule isn’t just a means of reducing senseless violence;

it also created a reason for people to act as empathetic beings.

The fact that this basic rule of human coexistence has consist­

ently been ignored or broken by all religions at all times (and

continues to be broken) does not detract from its value.

Caritas However, there have been many good ideas that have been un­

able to hold their ground over the course of human history. This

was because the structures were lacking what they would have

needed for their implementation. But the content of religions

has proven robust because they possess (institutional) struc­

tures. In Christianity especially, though also in Buddhism, we

can observe that the community was able to create an economic

foundation, usually aided by state privilege. This in turn enabled

the development of a good infrastructure. Whether in the reli­

gious realm or the secular realm, it’s a simple fact that you can’t

get much done without money. Yet money alone can achieve

nothing if the infrastructure is absent that you need in order to

deploy it meaningfully.

If we take a look at the history of the Christian West, we

see that Christian “caritas” – charity – was the only aid available

to people in need before the emergence of the modern welfare

state. Feeding the poor and setting up hospitals and hospices

were all financed and organized by the Church. This charitable

work of the Church remains respected to this day, even in a so­

ciety in which an ever greater number of people feel that certain

aspects of Christian belief have little or no meaning for them.

Responsibility for Creation“Sustainability” in our modern sense implies not just “long­term

impact,” but a positive quality that is derived from that impact.

It means that successive generations should be able to live a

good life. This notion of a socioecological dimension to sustain­

ability is something that we can find to a certain degree in many

holy texts of world religions. They require of man that he should

behave responsibly towards Nature’s bounty.

However, this requirement is often not just ignored, but sub­

ordinated to economic considerations – and this has happened

with the blessing of religious leaders themselves. Thus in the

Western world, the exploitation of Nature was for many years

carried out under the banner of Genesis 1:28, in which man is

urged to “subdue the Earth” – though in fact the Biblical text in

no way implies exploitation and destruction. Instead, it calls on

man to be a prudent ruler, and not to act as a despot bent on the

destruction of the Earth that God has given him.

This often ruinous attitude to the environment was never a

phenomenon that was confined to the West or to Christendom,

however. Nor is it today. We can see this in Asia, for example.

Even in societies with a Buddhist heritage, the Buddhist ethic of

causing no harm – which corresponds to the modern principle

of sustainability – hardly finds any concrete expression such as

a commitment to protecting the environment. And yet we can

also observe how this aspect of sustainability is being addressed

and encouraged more often today, both in Christianity and in

Buddhism.

We can see this if we consider just two of the most respect­

ed religious leaders of our day. In his last encyclical, entitled

“Laudato Si’” (“Praise be to you”), Pope Francis embarked on

an intensive engagement with sustainable, holistic development.

And the Dalai Lama, too, has recognized this as an important

aspect of religious life, and is committed to it. Since both reli­

gions possess a good infrastructure they can reach many people.

The sustainability of their forms of organization, having existed

now for hundreds or even thousands of years, could yet prove of

use to the world in future.

CREDO | 25

A model for the future: the community forest

Report | Combating climate change

Keeping nature intact for future generations: Rubikem, one of the very first protectors of the forest, here with her granddaughter.

Text: Christina Schott | Photos: Budi N.D. Dharmawan

All across the world, ever bigger swaths of ecologically valuable forest areas

are being sacrificed to short­term profit­seeking. However, one little village on

the Indonesian island of Java is showing that a different approach is possible.

26 | CREDO

Report | Combating climate change

“One point five million rupiahs,” says Sugiyono. The chairman of

the forest farmers’ association Jasema, clad in flip­flops and a

floppy hat, is surveying the 30­feet­plus teak tree before him with

an expert eye. We’re on Java, outside the village of Terong, in an

unused paddy field whose boundaries are marked by earthen

ridges lined with precious wood trees. Like many Indonesians,

Sugiyono has only this one name. He loops a tape measure

around the pale­colored tree trunk. “Three and a half feet,” he

calls. All the while, the humid heat is making sweat pour down

his face. Now that the tree has attained a diameter of just over

a foot, this hard, sought­after heartwood has reached a size that

would prompt many here in Indonesia to cut it down and sell it.

It’s owned by Suparni, a 38­year­old housewife with a 14­year­

old daughter. If Suparni sold it today it would bring her over a

hundred dollars. That’s roughly equivalent to a month’s wages

for her husband, who works as a carpenter.

But Suparni doesn’t want to sell the tree. It’s more a kind

of insurance for her, for she can use it as collateral for a micro­

credit. For the past year, members of Jasema have been able to

borrow small sums from its community fund in order to cover

urgent expenses or to realize promising business ideas – but

only if, in return, they don’t cut down their trees. Like Suparni.

She’s wearing a fashionable headscarf and jeans and explains a

little bashfully that she wants to expand her street stall where

she sells “es dawet,” a fragrant sweet dish made of rice flour

and pandan leaves in coconut milk sweetened with palm sugar.

She’s not cooking today, however, and instead the air is heavy

with the scent of fresh hay from the neighboring paddy field. It’s

drying out in a small bamboo shed while a storm is brewing on

the horizon, a portent of the coming rainy season.

Dry valleys, green mountainsThe little village of Terong is situated in Bantul regency in

Yogyakarta Province in Java. The long dry season this year has

had a severe, adverse impact on agriculture in the region. Many

plants have withered away and wells have dried up. In eastern

Bantul, steep winding roads lead eastwards into the limestone

mountains of Gunung Kidul. The hillsides are brown in many

places. But we’ve hardly inched up the last steep incline in our

old rental car when everything becomes greener and a fresh

breeze wafts towards us. When we get out in Terong, thick

clumps of the moist, red earth stick to our shoes. It’s all a huge

contrast to the omnipresent dust down in the valley.

Terong has 6500 inhabitants, and some 80 percent of its

territory is covered with forests. “Terong is the highest settle­

ment in Bantul,” explains the environmental activist Dwi

Nugroho later in a streetside café where we drink an aromatic

tubruk coffee that’s brewed directly in your cup. “If there

weren’t any more trees up here, that would have an impact on

the whole region further down in the valley. The springs would

dry up, and there’d be floods and landslides in the rainy season.”

The people here weren’t really thinking about environmental

protection when they planted their trees, he goes on to explain.

They were actually thinking of the economic advantages: valuable

Sugiran, a forest farmer, measures the circumference of a teak tree on Suparni’s land in order to estimate its value.

CREDO | 27

Sugiyono, chairman of the forest farmers’ association Jasema, estimates the height of a tree trunk that its owner Suparni would like to use as collateral for a microcredit.

mahogany, rosewood and teak, for example, serve as an insur­

ance scheme to help people get their children educated, or to

pay for a stay in hospital. In cases of emergency, people don’t

really think twice about whether felling a tree is going to damage

the environment.

Forest clearances – a climate killer It was in 2010 that Nugroho came to Terong for the first time.

He is a forest scientist from the provincial capital of Yogyakarta,

and today he’s the director of the environmental organization

Arupa, which campaigns for sustainable community forest man­

agement in underdeveloped villages. He came here because

he wanted to teach the villagers how to calculate the carbon

content of trees. They had no idea how this was supposed

to help them. “Then I explained to them that the shift in the

seasons and the failures of the harvest in their region were all

bound up with climate change. And that we could curb the

consequences of climate change with the help of the forests

and their ability to store carbon,” he says. His organization

numbers the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry, the Institute for

Global Environmental Strategies (Japan) and the European

Union among its supporters.

Indonesia has the world’s third­largest areas of rainforest

after Brazil and the Congo. However, these forests are disap­

pearing faster than in any other country. It’s estimated that close

to five million acres of trees are lost to deforestation every year

on this giant archipelago of some 17 500 islands. That’s roughly

equivalent to half the size of the Netherlands. These forests are

cleared in order to cultivate palm oil trees or paper plantations

or to extract mineral resources, for example – or just to exploit

their valuable woods. Every few years, illegal fire clearances in

the dry season mean that many Indonesian provinces are cov­

ered in acrid, black smoke for weeks on end, and it also spreads

to the neighboring countries of Singapore, Malaysia and Thai­

land. Because they cause heavy carbon dioxide pollution, forest

fires are reckoned to be the second­biggest climate killer after

worldwide traffic. And they’ve catapulted Indonesia into third

place among the climate offenders, behind China and the USA.

Environmental awareness takes root Only 23 percent of the main island of Java is still forested today

– most of it commercial timberlands. Rainforests survive only in

protected national parks. “The old government under Suharto

was keen to clear the forests, but they forgot to replant trees,”

28 | CREDO

says Partogi Dame Pakpahan, the head of the Agriculture and

Forestry Office in Bantul. We are interviewing him in a new

office complex down in the valley, for which undoubtedly trees

also had to be felled. “It was only after democratization in 1998

that things began moving in the opposite direction. But you

can’t change people’s environmental awareness from one day

to the next. The villagers of Terong are actually years ahead of

their neighbors.”

The person driving this environmental movement in Terong

is Rubikem, a 52­year­old, devout Moslem woman bursting with

energy. We meet her in front of her traditional wooden house,

surrounded by avocado, cocoa and mango trees. The state sent

her husband to the island of Madura to work as a primary school

teacher, but she stayed behind in Terong, where she lives with

the family of her eldest daughter. She is too rooted to the earth

of her home, she explains apologetically. We’re sitting on her

shady veranda, and she’s serving us homemade arrowroot chips

that taste savory and sweet at the same time. She has a vege­

table patch where chili peppers, tomatoes, eggplant and celery

are growing – “all of it organic,” she emphasizes, glancing at her

cow that’s responsible for producing the fertilizer. The commu­

nity forest starts just behind the vegetable patch – it’s a private,

commercial forest that’s cultivated by everyone together. The

individual owners are made up by a majority of the people in the

village. “Previously, many people had absolutely no idea what

riches they possessed,” complains Rubikem, who is herself a

child of landless farmers.

Forest ownership’s a woman’s workWhen she got married in 1981, Rubikem became the owner of

a small piece of land for the first­ever time. “Back then there

were places here that looked like a bald, shaven head. There was

nothing green and there was no water, just the bare, dry earth,”

she recalls. “So I started to plant trees everywhere, regardless

of whether the land belonged to me or to other people.” In 2007,

she founded a group for the protection of the forest in Terong.

In 2012, she was elected Indonesia’s best “independent head of

A women’s group in the meeting pavilion of Terong. Women own roughly half the village forests and so profit directly from a revival of sustainable forestry.

Report | Combating climate change

CREDO | 29

a community forest” – an award given to her in person by the

State President. But she sees this award as less of a gift than as a

challenge. And as an opportunity, too – especially for the women

in her village. According to a study by Arupa, not only are about

half of the forest owners women, but it’s also usually the women

who make the decisions about domestic finances. So it’s they,

too, who decide what to do with the trees their families own.

Today, this grandmother of two is bubbling over with ideas

as to how the villagers could improve their standard of living

by keeping their forest intact – ideas ranging from conventional

forestry to making handicrafts from woodland products and

even agritourism. Rubikem was naturally present when Arupa

taught selected forest farmers from Terong how to calculate

the carbon content of trees. And in 2012 she was also involved

when the forest farmers’ association Jasema was founded (it’s

a name made up of syllables from the Javanese words for teak,

albizia and mahogany). She’s worked as its secretary since then.

She was happy to let Sugiyono take up the office of chairman

– the unhurried but well­respected head of the local farmers’

group. A new village chief, Welasiman, had just been elected

at the time, and he also sits on their committee. Unusually, he

doesn’t belong to the rural upper classes, but is himself a

simple farmer. Welasiman’s goal, he declared both before and

after his election, is to improve the well­being of the people

through maintaining and cultivating their natural resources.

“This is a stroke of luck,” says Pakpahan of the Bantul Agricul­

ture and Forestry Office. “Elsewhere, people get bogged down

in the business of politics, especially where the community’s

forest is owned by the state. But in Terong they’re getting

straight to work,” he says.

The dream of the treeIn 2014 alone, the members of Jasema planted 4725 teak trees,

supported by Arupa and by monies from the Indonesia Climate

Change Trust Fund (ICCTF). These trees can store some 25

metric tons of carbon per year. The Ministry of National Develop­

ment Planning, Republic of Indonesia (BAPPENAS), thereupon

A women’s group in the meeting pavilion of Terong. Women own roughly half the village forests and so profit directly from a revival of sustainable forestry. Albizia saplings in Jasema’s tree nursery.

30 | CREDO

– the first microfinance organization in the regency with the

aim of protecting the forests. Since then, the finance commit­

tee has met once a month in Sugiyono’s house. Behind his wife’s

little shop, we climb up a steep staircase, accompanied by the

heavy perfume of ripe mangos. We take off our shoes before

entering the dim visitors’ room, where we sit down on bamboo

mats. Rubikem is the only woman on the committee. She sits

at a wobbly wooden table and sorts through the membership

ledgers of those who’ve borrowed money. A farmer comes and

pays an installment of what he owes. Another wants to borrow

nearly 40 dollars in order to pay the school fees of a grandson.

The brief conversations are carried out quietly, without any fuss.

There’s sweet tea for everyone to drink, and sticky rice wrapped

in banana leaves. Suparni also comes this afternoon in order to

apply for the money for an expansion of her street stall.

declared Terong a “climate­aware village” – which is a helpful

label for when they make other project applications. Never­

theless, so far 30 percent of the local forest owners haven’t yet

joined Jasema. Some ask what it’s going to bring them person­

ally, while others simply don’t want to be told when they will be

allowed to fell which trees. All the same, Jasema today has 555

members. Their wood is also legalized by means of the interna­

tionally recognized SVLK certificate, without which wood can

no longer be officially exported. And even at home in Indonesia,

wood can fetch far higher prices when it’s been certified.

But some members still resorted to cutting down immature

trees when they had to pay bills for medical consultations or

marriage celebrations, so the Jasema board reacted by setting

up the Koperasi Tunda Tebang (Cooperative to Delay Logging)

Report | Combating climate change

Sugiyono from the forest farmers’ association Jasema fills out the application forms for two members who would like to take out a microcredit.

CREDO | 31

become the basis of our existence. That at some point we can

become financially independent. That we’re joined not just by

all the forest farmers of Terong, but by all those in the whole

regency,” he says. Then he sets in motion the deafening, rattling

hand plow and sets off to work, plowing his future fruit grove.

We also meet another founder member of Jasema: Sugiran –

a forest farmer with dark, tanned skin. But he really only wants

to rest a little. He’s responsible for twelve acres of community

land that the village chief has placed at his disposal in order

to plant lucrative fruit trees such as avocados, durians and

guavas. But then Sugiran declares that he’s ready to go on a little

trip after all. So we follow him on clattering mopeds, over rough

tracks through fields and forests, up to the steep mountain

terraces on the outskirts of Terong. The cicadas are buzzing

away in the trees, and we can hear the far­off cry of a muezzin

echoing through the valley as we stagger on behind the wiry

43­year­old Sugiran in the humid midday heat, over to the side

of a freshly plowed field. Before us, a fabulous vista opens up

over the mountain landscape of Gunung Kidul – it’s almost

predestined for agritourism. “My dream is that the trees can

Christina Schott is a freelance journalist who has been reporting from

Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries since 2002. Her reports are

published in papers such as the daily “taz,” the weekly magazines “Stern”

and “Zeit,” the specialist magazine “neue energie,” qantara.de, the Internet

portal of Deutsche Welle for dialogue with the Arab world, and the English-

language daily newspaper “Jakarta Post.”

Sugiran plows unused land that the village council has offered up for planting fruit trees. Behind it, we can see the limestone mountains of Gunung Kidul.

32 | CREDO

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CREDO | 33

The perfect collector’s item

Masterpieces | Badminton Cabinet

It’s a masterpiece that was created for eternity: the “Badmin­

ton Cabinet” is overwhelming. But this isn’t just because of

its monumental size (it’s 12.6 feet tall, 7.6 feet wide and 3 feet

deep). The materials, craftsmanship and imagery of this richly

decorated cabinet were also intended to bestow on it a sense of

permanence. It was made to store precious items, and its bulky,

ebony body stands on eight feet shaped like obelisks, pointing

downwards to the floor. It is crowned by a coat of arms, with a

clock mounted in the gable underneath it. At the same height,

there are figural depictions of the four seasons in gilt­bronze.

The façade is ornamented with mosaics in pietra dura lapi­

dary work fashioned from valuable lapis lazuli, red and green

Sicilian jasper, amethyst, quartz and other precious stones.

These mosaics are of unfading beauty, and their colors and

spatial effects are unsurpassed.

It took a long time to make the “Badminton Cabinet.” For six

years, more than 30 craftsmen worked on it at the Galleria dei

Lavori, the Grand Ducal workshop in Florence. It was commis­

sioned by Henry Somerset, 3rd Duke of Beaufort (1707–1745),

whose Grand Tour through Europe in 1726 brought him to

Florence for five days. It was only shipped to London in the

fall of 1732, and thereafter formed the centerpiece of the

“Cabinet Room” in Badminton House in Gloucestershire, where

the Duke’s art collection was held.

In 1990, almost 260 years later, the family decided to sell

this magnificent piece of furniture in order to pay property taxes.

It brought 12.6 million euros at auction. On December 9, 2004,

it was again put up for auction at Christie’s in London. This time,

Prince Hans­Adam II von und zu Liechtenstein won the bid,

and the result was a worldwide sensation. The hammer price

of 17 million pounds sterling, roughly 27.4 million euros at the

time, made the “Badminton Cabinet” the most expensive piece

of furniture ever auctioned (and it holds the record to this day).

Many an observer was surprised that the Princely Collec­

tions acquired this cabinet, and even regarded it as a foreign

body in a collection that had thus far grown organically. But in

fact this particular cabinet offers excellent proof of a long­term

collecting policy, as is confirmed by three specific factors. First,

the “Badminton Cabinet” is a piece of furniture that is extra­

ordinary in both dimensions and quality. Secondly, its visual

impact is fundamentally determined by its pietra dura work.

Just as important, however, is the third factor, namely the gilt­

bronze sculptures of the seasons by Girolamo Ticciati.

Regarding the first point, the origins of the Princely Col­

lections lie in the Baroque ideal of princely patronage of the

17th century, and they also encompass a magnificent collection

of furniture. Ten years ago, however, this particular collection

lacked a balance between quality and quantity. That balance has

since been attained by means of selling unimportant objects on

the one hand, and acquiring outstanding pieces on the other.

Secondly, pietra dura work is a particular focus area of the

Princely Collections. The very first Prince to collect and commis­

sion works of art, Karl I von und zu Liechtenstein (1569–1627),

was devoted to lapidary objects and commissioned important

works from the Italian artists at the Prague court workshops.

Initially these were small panels, so­called “commessi di pietre

dure.” In around 1620, the Prince had these joined together

in the form of a small cabinet and a tabletop. In 1636, his son

Karl Eusebius I bought a precious tabletop in Florence that

documents the shift from the geometric motifs of the Prague

artists to the High Baroque. And as for the third factor – the

bronzes – this is a material that all generations of the Princes

of Liechtenstein have appreciated. In fact, it was Karl I himself

who commissioned two bronzes from Adrian de Fries that are

perhaps the most important such sculptures that one can see

in Vienna today. Karl Eusebius I and Johann Adam Andreas I

followed his example, and the reigning Prince has done the

same, having consolidated the significance of the Collections

considerably by acquiring bronzes by Mantegna, Sansovino,

Antico, Soldani and Guidi.

The acquisition of the “Badminton Cabinet” thus stands in

an existing tradition, and was driven first and foremost by the

idea of a long­term collecting focus. The importance of the Col­

lections was bolstered in a unique way by the cabinet’s trinity of

master craftsmanship in wood, pietra dura and bronze.

Dr. Johann Kräftner is the director of the Princely Collections of the House

of Liechtenstein and from 2002 to 2011 was director of the LIECHTENSTEIN

MUSEUM, Vienna. He is the author of numerous monographs on the history

and theory of architecture.

34 | CREDO

Literary choice | T. C. Boyle

California in the year 2025 isn’t a pretty place. There’s a

stink of “terminal mold” about the land, which alternates

between being permanently wet and scorching hot. The col­

lapsing biosphere means that people eat more catfish than eggs

with bacon. The forests that haven’t yet been chopped down

have simply died. And the last remaining exotic animals are to

be found in the private zoo of an aging pop star – forming a kind

of glitzy Noah’s Ark. In order to care for his menagerie, the one­

time star Maclovio Pulchris has engaged none other than Ty­

rone O’Shaughnessy Tierwater, a former environmental activist

who later became known as an eco­warrior. When Ty isn’t busy

feeding the hyena, the Patagonian fox and the three asthmatic

lions – all of them the last of their kind – he’s busy writing a book

about the life and death of his daughter Sierra. Her life as an

ascetic tree­hugger made her even more famous than her father

– not least because she fell to her death from the branch of a

redwood tree after having occupied it for several years.

“A Friend of the Earth”This spectacular act of civil disobedience wasn’t invented

by T. C. Boyle, but he did drive it to its cynical extreme in his

witty novel “A Friend of the Earth,” which was first published in

2000. In fact, in 1997 a woman did indeed occupy a tree in the

redwood forests of California to prevent it from being chopped

down – a tree that was over a thousand years old. For two years,

Julia Hill, a member of the environmental advocacy group Earth

First!, did not set foot on the ground. But at least she didn’t have

to pay for her fearlessness with her life. Her dedication made her

famous, and the tree was spared. Boyle’s pugnacious Sierra is

taught by her parents and their fellow campaigners how to sabo­

tage the gears of a bulldozer and to disable transmission towers,

all as part of an organization called E.F.! – Earth Forever. In Ty’s

memory it is transfigured nostalgically into a peace­loving band

of hippies, though in fact their battles to save the Earth had as­

sumed militant, even delusional traits. And it wasn’t just Sierra

who became a victim. Ty is a victim too, for it destroyed his family.

CREDO | 35

Whether the “fate of the earth” is worth personal sacrifices

is one of the most gripping questions that T. C. Boyle engages

with to the very last – and Ty with him. Motivated by his ex­wife

Andrea and the sight of her immaculate décolleté, Ty begins

his comprehensive look back at the good old days, when many

people thought they were allies of nature. He gazes back on life

as a “dirty old man,” as someone who did many bad things in the

name of the good. But the fact that he was wrong does not put

his opponents in the right.

T. C. Boyle’s “A Friend of the Earth” is a grotesque, tragicomic

novel. It is an ambivalent morality tale such as is typical for this

high­speed storyteller of US contemporary literature. Ty’s credo

resembles the insights offered by Tomas Stockmann in the fifth

act of Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People”: “[That] the strong­

est man in the world is he who stands most alone.” Conversely,

Boyle shows us the whole senselessness of all well­meaning com­

mitment – though his sympathies (and those of his readers soon

enough) invariably lie with Ty. These self­anointed do­gooders,

campaigning with dubious means for the preservation of Cre­

ation, are brought before us in a manner that is as merciless as

it is amusing. But Boyle also parades before us those who fatally

cling to their comforts in all their thoughtlessness, stupidity and

greed, and who thereby further expedite the apocalypse.

The way in which T. C. Boyle unmasks his “Friend of the

Earth” as an egomaniac, though without betraying either of the

two different camps – the environmentalists on the one side and

the uncritical consumers on the other – is proof of his mastery.

He adds another twist to his art of storytelling that he had al­

ready revealed in his brilliant epic “The Tortilla Curtain” about

the life of illegal Mexican immigrants in the USA. He foments

the paranoia that exists between his protagonists, based as it

is on prejudice and fears. At the same time, this novel signifies

the beginning of a shift into the personal in Boyle’s oeuvre. His

characters are as important to him here as his topic, and this

gives the novel a touching aspect alongside its sense of urgency.

And when Boyle warns that our demands for comfort and luxury

threaten to turn the Earth into a mixture of a desert and a gar­

bage dump, his argument has lost none of its topicality in the

15 years since his book was first published.

T. C. BoyleTom Coraghessan Boyle was born as Thomas John Boyle on December

2, 1948, in Peekskill, New York, the grandson of Irish immigrants.

At the age of 17, Boyle changed his middle name to “Coraghessan,”

which is the last name of a distant relative.

Boyle discovered his passion for literature while at the State University

of New York. After completing his literature studies, he evaded the

draft for the Vietnam War by going to work as a teacher at his former

school in 1968, where drugs and violence were the order of the day.

In 1972, Boyle was accepted into the Writers’ Workshop at the Uni-

versity of Iowa, where his lecturers included John Cheever and John

Irving. In 1977, he was awarded a Ph.D. for a collection of short

stories. These brought him a teaching position at the University of

Southern California in Los Angeles.

Boyle’s first novel appeared in 1982: “Water Music.” “World’s End”

(1987) was his third novel, and brought him his breakthrough with the

critics and the public alike. He followed it up with highly successful

books such as “The Road to Wellville” (1993), “The Tortilla Curtain”

(1995) and “Drop City” (2003). Meanwhile, he has published over

two dozen volumes of stories and novels. His most recent book was

“The Harder They Come” (2015).

Felicitas von Lovenberg has been head of the literature section at the

“Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” and hosts the TV program “lesenswert”

(“worth reading”) for SWR in Germany (Southwest Broadcasting Company).

36 | CREDO

Recorded by: Karin Brigl

Daniel Abt races through the urban jungles of the world’s

megacities in his electric racing car, generating enthusi­

asm for the new concept of electric mobility. He is con­

vinced that new things and new ideas have to be given a

chance. This is the only way you can develop – and you

can experience amazing surprises along the way.

How quickly opinions can change! Just a year ago people laughed

at me when I told them I’m a racing driver in Formula E. Go

ahead and play with your electric stuff, they said. Real racing

cars have to be loud, fast and stink of exhaust fumes. I disagree.

Other racing series can only dream of the kind of action and

tension that we experience in Formula E, not to mention the

enthusiasm of our spectators.

Meanwhile, most of our critics have gone silent. Now I

get calls from driver colleagues, asking how they can get into

Formula E. And yet we’re only into our second season! I would

never have imagined that the mood would turn so positive, so

quickly. But this innovative racing series aims at sustainability

and is special in all kinds of ways.

For example, we don’t drive on permanent racetracks

somewhere out in the sticks but on temporary circuits set up

right in the middle of the world’s great cities. The atmosphere

there is fantastic and the stands are jam­packed at most races.

I get the impression that Formula E appeals to a considerably

bigger audience than traditional motorsports. Undoubtedly also

because the whole thing takes place on a single day and people

At the wheel

He’d like to improve the image of electric cars: Daniel Abt in his Formula E racer.

CREDO | 37

don’t have the rigmarole of traveling out to a racetrack. And

since the races aren’t excessively loud, even families with kids

come to watch.

Besides, there’s a lot for the spectators to enjoy. They see

overtaking maneuvers, car contact, breakdowns and even

crashes. We are noticeably slower than Formula 1, but that

doesn’t alter the sense of excitement, either for them or for us

in the driver’s seat. You have to drive an electric racing car quite

differently from a racing car with a combustion engine. We only

have a limited amount of energy at our disposal and we have to

use it efficiently. If I went at full speed on every lap I’d never

reach the finish. That’s a completely new strategic aspect for

both the drivers and their teams. In order to conserve energy,

for example, you take your foot off the gas before a turn, so you

freewheel towards it. That gives other drivers the opportunity to

attack and overtake you.

Even just a few years ago, I would never have thought that

electric cars could be so interesting. Formula E began its very

first season in October 2014. As a racing team, we heard about

it for the first time in May 2013 in Monaco, during one of my

GP2 races. My team manager went to my father and told him

about the plans for an electric racing series. Our company was

already investing heavily in electric drivetrain technologies at

the time, because for several years we’ve been converting road

vehicles to electric power. So Formula E seemed to us to be an

ideal platform. And today, my former team manager is building

cars for Formula E.

When our bid to join Formula E was accepted, it seemed

natural that I’d be one of the two guys sitting in the cockpit. It

also takes me forward in my career as a racing driver. I can’t

imagine a better job at the moment. It’s not just the speed that

fascinates me. It’s the whole package: this feeling of racing along

a cool circuit in a great car, taking things to their very limit,

battling with other drivers, appearing before the media, meet­

ing fans, working with a fantastic team, and feeling the thrill

of the moment.

For as long as I can remember, motorsports has been impor­

tant in our family. I was attending lots of races when I was just

a kid. My uncle was a racing driver in the STW and DTM series,

while my father manages our own team in Formula E and DTM

and runs the family business. I sat in a kart for the first time

when I was about five years old, and drove my first laps on our

company grounds. Two years later I had my first kart race. For

me, that was a great hobby. It became more serious when I got

into a formula car for the first time at the age of 14. It’s an abso­

lutely crazy feeling when you’re thundering around a big racing

circuit at close to 150 mph. It was back then that I realized that

I wanted to become a professional racing driver.

Meanwhile, I’ve driven for different teams in all kinds of

racing series. My best year thus far was 2012, when I was just

a few points short of becoming champion of the renowned GP3

series, finishing as runner­up instead. I’m now into my second

season driving for our own team in Formula E. The mood among

the drivers and the teams is the best I’ve ever experienced in my

motorsport career so far.

We’re all trying to move this project forward together. Of

course, Formula E on its own won’t be enough to speed up

the development of electric cars for general use on the roads.

Quite a few things still have to be done to achieve that, both

technologically and with regard to infrastructure. But I think

that Formula E helps to improve the image of cars with sustain­

able engines. Because electric cars are a lot cooler than many

people think.

Carte Blanche | Daniel Abt

Daniel Abt was born in 1992 into a motorsport family in Kempten in

Bavaria. His father owns a racing team, and his uncle raced success-

fully in the STW, DTM and GT series. After seven years in karting,

Daniel Abt became champion of the ADAC Formel Masters, among

others. He has raced in Formula 3, GP3, GP2 and in the Le Mans 24-

hour race. In 2009 and 2010, he was overall champion of the German

Post Speed Academy and was named “Germany’s motorsport talent

of the year.” Since 2014 he has been one of the two drivers for the

Formula E team ABT Schaeffler Audi Sport.

38 | CREDO

Innovation | XXI 2015Laura Weidmann PowersShe helps black and Latin American students to conquer Silicon Valley.

Order

Interestedin back issues of CREDO?

Beauty | XIV 2012Wolfgang FasserHow the blind music therapist opens up the world to disabled children.

Freedom | XV 2012Shirin EbadiThe Iranian Nobel Prize winner fights for human rights.

Community Spirit | XVIII 2014Jim CapraroBuilder of bridges between busi­ness, politics and the community in Chicago.

Tolerance | XVI 2013Kiran BediFighter for tolerance among India’s religious and ethnic groups.

Curiosity | XVII 2013Ian BakerHe succeeded where many before him had failed: he dis­covered the gates of paradise.

Power | XIX 2014Mikhail GorbachevOnce he was the leader of a super­power. Today he’s regarded at best as a tragic hero.

Innovation, Honesty, Power, – over the past few years, our

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Honesty | XX 2015Adolfo Kaminsky A forger out of necessity, he saved the lives of thousands of Jews.

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