The last few years are acknowledged as the hottest since the temperatures were measured in the modern era; climate systems show instability and deviation from known patterns; extreme events (floods, fires, sandstorms, consecutive years of drought, etc.) claim human lives in different parts of the world; food production is reduced by soil erosion and climatic instability; extinction of species and damage to ecosystems reduce the contribution of ecosystem services that support normal living systems.
These negative effects, caused by irresponsible human activity, place mankind, for the first time since the beginning of its existence, at a critical time, which requires a significant multi-systemic and international activity to reduce the environmental effects to allow future generations to function comfortably and stably.
The field of 'sustainability' deals with safeguarding stable life-support systems for future generations, from an environmental, economic, and social point of view. Unlike the past years, in which we focused only on the physical and biotic systems, assuming that sustaining them would protect our future lives, it is clear to us today that maintaining stable living systems for future generations is also subject to combining processes and solutions from all academic fields, such as philosophy, psychology, planning, policy, economics, education, health, and so forth. Therefore, all the academic units at Ben Gurion University, such as engineering, humanities and social sciences, life sciences, health, management and the desert research institutes, joined together, under the school, to study sustainability and confronting the ecological crisis and climate crisis.
At the Goldman Sonnenfeldt School of Sustainability and Climate Change, as a supra-faculty framework, we connect scientists from across the university for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary academic and research activities. We believe that such connections may ensure a system-wide treatment of society-economy-environment, in a manner that will both deepen our understanding of processes and make it possible to find the necessary solutions.
We believe that the research students at Ben Gurion University play a decisive role in the advancement of knowledge and research in the leading laboratories of the university and that they are the future generation that can ensure adequate solutions and environmental stability.
We see great importance in environment study programs for undergraduate students, with the aim of instilling the best knowledge and in-depth familiarity with the challenges of preserving the environment. We are convinced that today's undergraduate students are the environmental leaders of the future!
Together with leading scientists from all over the world in an international scientific cooperation, promoting leading interdisciplinary research at Ben Gurion University, teaching students in various degrees and working together with the Israeli government, the Negev Municipalities and the community, the Goldman Sonnenfeldt School of Sustainability and Climate Change at Ben Gurion University constitutes a decisive factor of coping with the environmental crises for the benefit of future generations!
Prof. Yaron Ziv
Head of the Goldman Sonnenfeldt School of Sustainability and Climate Change
