Research Initiative 2023: Sharing a Planet In Peril

The interrelated crises associated with Global Environmental Change (GEC) – including biodiversity loss, climate change and the depletion of soils and waters – are mounting threats to both human and nonhuman life. While the natural sciences provide solid evidence of the magnitude of those threats, the social and cultural dimensions of GEC have received much less attention, although the importance of diverse forms of knowledge, imaginaries and practices in explaining and addressing these threats are increasingly acknowledged.


The research initiative ‘Sharing a Planet in Peril’ conjoins the University of Cologne’s outstanding expertise in Global South Studies and Environmental Humanities to tackle the burning environmental questions of our time. To this end we are building an international and interdisciplinary network of researchers, including scholars and affected communities from the Global South, in order to examine how the inequitable impacts of GEC are being experienced, narrativized, and responded to within different locations, discourses and media around the world. Informed by decolonial and multispecies methodologies and political ecology perspectives, this initiative seeks to uncover in particular the potential of a range of ideas and activities related to ‘sharing’ to facilitate more equitable, ecological and convivial lifeways.