FAW/n combines up-to-date expert knowledge on (world) economic processes and the world financial system, globalization effects and renationalization tendencies, the energy and climate themes, technology and innovation, environmental and resource issues, and the shaping of social balance both within and between societies.
Hopeful guiding ideas advocated are a Global Marshall Plan, a Marshall Plan with Africa, the concept of climate justice, protection of rainforests, a forced world reforestation program on degraded soils in the tropics, and a humus rebuilding program in semi-arid areas. A key to the energy and climate issues is seen in a methanol economy along the lines of Desertec 2.0.
Besides the potentials of technical progress, risks and rebound effects are also addressed – whether in the field of energy and climate or in information and communication technologies and robotics.
Sustainable Development
The 2030 Agenda, the so-called global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations, has constituted the internationally accepted framework for action on sustainable development since 2015. Hopes were high and still are, but the track record so far is poor.
Not only is there a lack of rudimentary funding and sanction mechanisms. Instead, the SDGs are a step backward compared to the Millennium Development Goals in the sense that they make it easier for rich countries to focus on their own national problems instead of tackling the major global challenges in international cooperation. Foremost among these is the dilemma of how developing countries are to achieve prosperity without placing an additional burden on planet Earth through respective economic growth. Rapid population growth in some countries is aggravating the problem.
So can the SDGs even be achieved by 2030? The following issues matter:
Energy
The basis for the emergence and continuation of our civilization and its prosperity is the availability and utilization of energy sources, from fire to coal, oil and gas to renewable energies and synthetic fuels.
FAW/n is researching how to build and secure an energy supply on a global scale that even has a positive climate impact and is affordable, and how developing countries can adopt a climate-positive development path.
Climate Change
For us humans, climate change is neither exclusively nor primarily an environmental problem. Rather, it is about energy and prosperity. And this is on a global scale. Realistic approaches to solutions must therefore be inherently international in orientation, rather than purely national.
At FAW/n, we are investigating how industrialized countries can succeed in pulling together with developing and emerging countries at climate conferences towards climate neutrality, what the most promising and efficient solutions are, and what role the private sector can take.
Development Cooperation
Climate change, migration, fair trade, green growth – more than ever, the public is calling for “better” development cooperation that can successfully address these issues. What should this look like?
FAW/n analyzes how Germany and Europe can shape a sustainable future together with Africa, the continent of destiny and opportunity, and how the simultaneity of development and environmental/climate protection can be achieved.
Global Population Development
The world’s population will grow to 10 billion by 2050. The demand for raw materials and the pressure on the planet will thus continue to increase. At the same time, the course for post-2050 development is already being set today.
At FAW/n, we face up to the question of how to curb population growth to stabilize the world’s population at 10 billion people, and how to meet the needs and legitimate expectations of prosperity in developing and emerging countries without further increasing humanity’s ecological footprint.
Technology
When the Research Institute for Applied Knowledge Processing, the predecessor of today’s FAW/n, was founded in October 1987, it was the first independent institute for artificial intelligence in Germany. Today, information and communication technologies have become an integral part of our society.
A “Brave New World” seems to have opened up. While some praise greater comfort, freedoms and leisure, others fear the ever-present surveillance of people (glass human being) and the takeover of power by machines and supercomputers (digital capitalism)
It must be noted that social, biological and also technological innovations have accompanied our civilization since the beginning of the Neolithic and have enabled or caused a world population growth from about 20 million hunter-gatherers to today’s 7.8 billion world citizens.
Now we are challenged to link new technical options, such as self-learning AI systems, algorithms, or synthetic fuels, with biological solutions, such as rainforest protection, forestry, or sustainable agriculture, to overcome the current global energy and climate crisis.
Power-to-X / Synthetic Fuels
Renewable energy, green hydrogen and synthetic fuels will be the key to solving the current energy and climate problems, which can be linked to a high level of civilization and a catching up of developing and emerging countries in prosperity issues.
At FAW/n, we develop ideas on how green hydrogen and synthetic fuels can become economically competitive with fossil fuels and how a mutually beneficial partnership between Germany/Europe with Africa and other parts of the world can look in this topic area.
Information and Knowledge Processing
The technical potential of a civilization is determined in particular by the performance of the algorithms available to it. For example, the idea of representing numbers additively as multiples of exponents of the number 10, which originated in the Arab-Indian cultural area, is considered a breakthrough in civilization.
FAW/n explores the opportunities and threats posed by the increasing possibilities of artificial intelligence and the power of modern algorithms, and how the former can be leveraged and the latter avoided.
Nature-based Solutions
Nature-based Solutions (NbS) contribute to reducing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere by activating natural carbon sinks on the one hand, and to socioeconomic development on the other. They include wetlands, especially peatlands, mangrove forests, primary and secondary forests, and rainforests, soils and humus.
At FAW/n, we are investigating how financial resources from CO2 emitters can be channeled internationally in the meaning of the polluter pays principle to those who remove the corresponding emissions from the atmosphere again via NbS.
Global Governance
The problems on the globe are drifting towards a decision faster than expected. At the heart of the struggle for a future worth living is the question of sustainable global governance, i.e., a stable international regulatory framework. Such a framework is urgently needed to solve the climate problem, but also to restructure the world financial system. In both cases, the entire human race is affected.
Other governance issues, such as the fair regulation of global trade, the prevention of slave-like child labor, and combating global environmental degradation, also call for better global regulation as a matter of urgency.
In this context, the game-theoretic expertise of FAW/n enables a realistic as well as pragmatic view on the following topics:
Economy
The current form of capitalism has – from a global perspective – taken the form of a “plunder system”. What is urgently needed is the internalization of external costs, which, in combination with new technologies, can enable a future of prosperity worldwide.
FAW/n therefore advocates a global eco-social market economy based on free markets, ownership and personal responsibility and at the same time framed by two guiding principles, namely social balance and the protection of the environment and biodiversity.
Global Financial System
The global financial crisis of 2008 is still having an impact today. The necessary conclusions and lessons seem to have been drawn only in part.
At FAW/n, we explore necessary and possible changes at the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, and the world financial system, as well as the best courses of action for Germany and Europe under inadequate global regulatory conditions.
Social Injustice
The triumph of neoliberalism since the 1980s, in the course of liberalization, privatization and deregulation, has brought with it not only enormous increases in balance sheet prosperity but also an increase in actual and perceived inequality and insecurity, especially in the industrialized countries.
FAW/n addresses the questions of how much inequality societies can tolerate, how inequality should be countered efficiently, and how high socially and environmentally compatible production standards can be ensured along globalized supply chains.
Global Marshall Plan
A “world in balance” requires a better design of globalization and world economic processes. It is a matter of fair global framework conditions, sustainable development, overcoming poverty, protecting the environment, justice and, as a consequence, a new world economic miracle.
FAW/n supports the solution approaches of the Global Marshall Plan for a world in balance and contributes to their implementation with its activities. In the wake of the Corona crisis, this also applies to the question of how the resilience of social systems can be strengthened internationally.