Philipp Pattberg
Simple in means, rich in ends
Category: Uncategorised
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For the past three decades, the world has operated under a shared set of rules: democracy, the rule of law, open markets, and cooperation between nations. This “liberal world order” shaped everything from global trade to human rights, and it also gave us landmark environmental agreements, like the Paris Agreement on climate change or the…
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In October 2025, I had the privilege to visit Japan for the first time. I had been invited to the Dutch pavilion at the 2025 Osaka Expo to share my insights on multi-stakeholder partnerships as a key way of implementing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). What I wanted to achieve with my talk…
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The international system is is crisis, undergoing a profound transformation. We seem to be quickly regressing back to a system of national egoism, “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”. Addressing the fundamental crisis of climate change will not work based on national egoism. We need to revive global…
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Across civilizations and centuries, balance with the natural world was more than a metaphor, it was a way of knowing, a way of being. In Taoism, the dance of yin and yang expresses the interdependence of opposites: light and dark, action and stillness, life and decay. Harmony arises not from dominance, but from reciprocity. In…
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Attending ESA’s 2025 Living Planet Symposium in Vienna, I encountered a familiar refrain: if only we had more and better data on the state of our environment, from climate change, biodiversity loss, and air pollution to plastics and pesticides, then, surely, decision-makers would finally act. And if they don’t, it’s because scientists haven’t communicated the…
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We’re not just facing one big crisis, we’re facing many of them, all at once. Climate change, geopolitical tension, rising inequality, technological disruption, pandemics, information warfare, it’s overwhelming. But what makes this moment especially dangerous is that these crises don’t exist in isolation. They overlap, feed off each other, and make everything harder to solve.…
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As a social scientist, I spend a lot of time thinking about how people communicate, connect, and construct meaning. So it only felt right to apply a little of that thinking to my own online presence. This website is my humble attempt at practicing what I preach: creating a space where ideas, research, and the…
Philipp Pattberg 