Michael Succow & Lutz Fähser

The German forest is in worse shape than it has been for a long time. Climate change with increased temperatures, droughts and extreme weather events means a big change in a short time. Forest areas are becoming diseased, weakened and falling victim to insects, fungal diseases and storms. Heidelberg's urban forest is also feeling the effects of climate change. In the drought summer of 2022, it performed about 75 percent less photosynthesis than in previous years. The lecture shows what sustainable and future-oriented forest management must look like and what we humans can do for nature.

The biologist Prof. em. Dr. Michael Succow was deputy minister of the environment in the GDR. In 1997 he was awarded the Alternative Nobel Prize of the Right Livelihood Award Foundation for his services to nature conservation. He used the prize money to establish the Michael Succow Foundation for the Protection of Nature.

The forest scientist Dr. Lutz Fähser developed an ecologically and socially oriented concept of "near-natural forest use" in the Lübeck city forest. To this day, he accompanies forest-related projects in more than 30 countries.

As part of the International Science Festival - Geist Heidelberg

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