and social sciences are carelessly under-estimated and under-used when it comes to the need for sustainable action. Subsequently I shall not speak about Climate Change. Instead I shall speak of the broader term of sustainability, as the crisis that is threatening our planet and its inhabitants cannot be looked at as an isolated case, but only in its entirety. We are facing several kinds of displacement caused by globalisation: the division between the localised poor and the globalised rich (Zygmunt Bauman); the growth of the world population and simultaneous decline of vital resources such as energy, water, land and forests, which are no longer common goods and the migration that results from this; the increasing number of both shrinking cities and megacites, and the desolate landscape between them (Jean Ziegler). The cultural ramifications of Climate Change will have retroactive effects as long as the dignified existence in education and health of every single individual is put below the need for capitalism. These all raise existential challenges to policy making, to which the current discussion about Climate Change does not do justice. To develop sustainability as a powerful tool for change we should resort back to St. Francis of Assisi’s detailed definition – he who was perhaps the first ecologist in history: “... per lo quale a le tue creature dai sustentamento (...through which you give your creatures sustenance)”5. One could also refer back to Joachim Heinrich Campe, teacher of Wilhelm 5
Saint Francis of Assisi, Il Cantico di Frate Sole, 1224 – 1225
CONCEPTUAL THOUGHTS ON A FUND FOR AESTHETICS AND SUSTAINABILITY
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