Winter School at Collegio Futuro on “Synergies and Conflicts of Different Land-Use Options”

During the first week of February, Jens and Anne from our working group joined a cohort of PhD and Master’s students from across the 4EU+ Alliance for the Collegio Futuro winter school in Heidelberg. Hosted by the Heidelberg Center for the Environment (HCE) and organized by Flagship 4 (Environmental Transitions) of the Alliance, the one-week program encouraged participants to look beyond their disciplinary boundaries to tackle the planet's most urgent environmental crises.

As both a major driver and a consequence, land use plays a central role in shaping environmental sustainability and social equity. This finding served as the starting point for the winter school. The program explored how decisions about land, resource extraction, and conservation intersect with energy transitions, biodiversity loss, and socio-economic priorities. Through lectures and workshops, the winter school confronted the complexity of “wicked problems,” where ecological objectives meet political, economic, and social realities.

Jens participated in the workshop on nature conservation. His team addressed a key flaw in global land-conservation policy: the “Quantity Gap.” They developed a policy brief advocating not simply for more protected hectares, but for targeted conservation of irreplaceable habitats and species, ensuring that global 30x30 goals translate into meaningful ecological outcomes.

Anne joined the workshop on critical raw materials. Her group investigated four strategic materials—lithium, nickel, aluminum, and rare earth elements—highlighting how social, environmental, and geopolitical dimensions vary for each resource. Their research will be synthesized into a policy brief to inform decision-making on sustainable and equitable resource governance that takes the different dimensions and ressource difference into account instead of formulating a universal policy brief for all critical raw materials. 

Both policy brief will be found shortly on the homepage of the HCE https://www.hce.uni-heidelberg.de/en/educational-offer/collegio-futuro.

Beyond the workshops, the winter school’s greatest value lay in the exchange with peers from diverse disciplines and cultures, which fostered new perspectives on how land-use decisions shape both environmental futures and societal well-being.