Two of our Colleges, CANR and CoL&P, together with our Center for Teacher
Education, cooperated to organize the International Conference on Sustainability Culture
(ICSC), 2 nd edition on this November 2, 2023. It was organized to celebrate the 104th
Anniversary of our University. Many experts from more than five countries including
Japan, USA, Germany, The Netherlands, and Taiwan were gathered from around the
globe in these post-pandemic times and convened at the occasion of the ICSC. Together
with the International PhD Program on Taiwan and Transcultural Studies, a two day
lecture and workshop program was added to discuss transcultural perspectives on
sustainability.
The ICSC provides a platform for professionals to exchange knowledge and gain an
insight into the latest ideas and solutions on the interdisciplinary study of sustainability
culture and what is needed to achieve the Great AgroEcological Transition as they have
been developed and applied in different countries. Participants include a wide variety of
stakeholders from research and academia, to industrial sectors as well as government
organizations. The theme of this edition was New Climate Ethics.
The conference was opened by NCHU VP CHOU, Chi-Chung, Dean of OIA, who in his
speech acknowledged the importance of this conference to raise the awareness on
sustainability and have cross-discipline debate on how to together work on a sustainable
future. Dean LEE Chang-yen of the College of Law and Politics then praised the success
of the conference.
The Key Note Speaker was Professor WolfgangWELSCH of Friedrich Schiller
University of Jena, Germany, who is world's leading thinker in the field of
Transculturality Studies. He stressed the importance of breaking down barriers of all
kinds between human beings and their environement as well as between species of
living beings to be able to develop a new ethics of co-existence in times of climate
change.
In the first panel of the conference, a delegation from the University of Guam debated
the theme of "Defining the better life" in climate change times from the perspectives of
Agroecology, Tourism, and Agricultural workers' stress.
The second panel with spakers from NTNU, NCCU, NCHU and Kyoto University,
discussed the theme of “Borderlessness as the New Ethics of Space” and brought forth
perspectives on the use of the “Royal We” in the discussion on who is responsible for
the climate crisis and its solution, on adaptation, on how NeuroDiversity plays into
social interactions, as well as on the more technical aspect of carbon sequestration
through bio-energy.
A unique part of the conference was a participation by an Agricultural Specalist from
Taiwan who is working on the Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu for the Taiwanese
Government to assist in cultivation techniques of vegetables.
Another special event was the opening of the 2022-2023 Green Campus Student Action
Poster Repository Exhibition and the International Forum on that. This project showed
the results of an on campus in class Living Labs drive by our coordinator Theodoor
Richard, together with Professors Pai Hui-Chuan of Education and Hwang Shaw-Yhi of
Entomology to foster awareness and engagement with our studenst on how to live
sustainably.
