Sustainability
 Boston

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Sustainability Statement

The Goethe-Institut Boston is committed to the ideals of the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals to address the world’s most pressing challenges by 2030, including inequality, climate, education, and justice. Our mission to foster international cultural exchange, transatlantic dialogue and educational collaborations is encapsulated in these goals. We strive to listen to the community in which we work and address today’s challenging questions through our programming. We hope to inspire and engage our audience, students, and visitors by demonstrating our commitment to sustainability in everything we do.   

The Goethe-Institut Boston is committed to communicating the urgency of action to fight climate change and building a sustainable world through cultural and educational programming in collaboration with our partners in New England. We are an active member of the Cultural Working Group of Boston’s Green Ribbon Commission, a group of business, institutional, and civic leaders in Boston working to develop shared strategies for fighting climate change and are participating in the city’s pilot Climate Action Plan process in 2021. 

The Goethe-Institut Boston is taking concrete steps to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and working towards becoming carbon neutral. We strive to incorporate ecological sustainability into our planning and decision-making with the aim to reduce the environmental impact of our facilities and operations. We recognize the delicate balancing and difficult decision-making that are required to meet these ambitious environmental goals and simultaneously fulfill our institution’s mission of transatlantic exchange and connecting educators, experts, and artists across the Atlantic. We strive to live this dilemma openly and continuously look for new solutions.  

Ecologues - How we survive the human age

Ecologues is an online magazine in which the Goethe-Institut engages in an ongoing discussion with experts and victims of climate change all over the world about sustainability and new forms of environmentalism as well as the social and cultural aspects of climate change.     

Ecologues is a portmanteau of “ecology” and “dialogues”. Which points up the magazine’s subject matter and editorial approach: namely, hosting global debates about the challenges posed by climate change. What can and must be done about it now? Which existing initiatives in various countries around the world could be representative of the kind of the complex solution we need? How do we create a world of climate justice in which we will all be able to lead decent lives in future? These are the questions Ecologues has been addressing since October 2020, along the lines of the magazine's subtitle: “How we survive the Anthropocene”.