The global challenges of the 21st century are more diverse than ever, and solving them has now become essential if future generations are to have the same quality of life as current societies. But as the insufficient implementation of the 17 SDGs of the Agenda 2030 shows, there is still a long way to go. Even though environmental awareness seems to be increasing in society and especially in the younger generations, there is still a large gap between existing knowledge and actual action in the sustainability context. Geography can make a great contribution here due to its multi-perspective and interdisciplinary view of the entirety of planet Earth and by taking a spatial, scale and temporal level and thus holistic way of thinking, especially with regard to civil society everyday action in the sustainability context. However, the actual influence of geographical ways of knowing and thinking in this context have been little researched so far and also the social perception of geography is still to be classified as insufficient.
The lecture therefore pursues the questions, which role geography can take in the context of a socio-ecological transformation and which influence geographical knowledge has in particular on the civil society implementation of specific sustainability goals.
The basis for this are the results of qualitative expert interviews with professors of geography in German-speaking countries (n=33) as well as a quantitative online survey among the civil society of the German population, which were conducted in the context of the dissertation project presented here. Thus, on the one hand, the importance of geography in the context of the socio-ecological transformation was determined from the perspective of the scientific community and, on the other hand, knowledge gaps within civil society in this context were located and evaluated whether and to what extent geographical knowledge can fill these gaps and how such knowledge can be transferred.