Steering Committee

Prof. Dr Edeltraud Guenther

Director, UNU-FLORES, Germany

Prof. Dr Marc Wolfram

 

Director, Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development, Germany

Prof. Edeltraud Guenther is a globally recognised expert in environmental management and sustainability assessment.  She assumed the position of Director of United Nations University Institute for Integrated Management of Material Fluxes and of Resources (UNU-FLORES) in Dresden, Germany on 1 September 2018.

Prof. Guenther’s research focusses on sustainability management, environmental accounting, and management control systems, with an emphasis on corporate responsibility, life cycle assessment, resilience, and sustainability assessment. As UNU-FLORES Director, Prof. Guenther is a vocal advocate for “Advancing the Resource Nexus”, which is also reflected in the Institute’s mission to create meaningful impact across the scientific landscape, and to champion the Resource Nexus as a vital scientific perspective.

Prof. Guenther received her doctorate in Environmental Accounting from the University of Augsburg and has held the position of Chair of Business Management, Sustainability Management and Environmental Accounting, at the Faculty of Business and Economics at Technische Universität Dresden (TU Dresden) since 1996. She founded the Centre for Performance and Policy Research in Sustainability Measurement and Assessment (PRISMA) in 2016 and has acted as the Centre’s Chair since then. As an international authority on environmental resource management, Prof. Guenther has held Visiting Professorships at Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST), Kobe University, and University of Virginia.

In addition to her involvement on the editorial boards for a variety of scientific journals, Prof. Guenther is Editor-in-Chief for the Sustainability Management Forum (2015), as well as subject editor of the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment (2016). In her own work, Prof. Guenther most notably poses the question “How does it pay to be sustainable?” and is a proponent for promoting the financial benefits of sustainability; this is demonstrated through her significant publication record of over 200 journal articles, and her contributions to several book chapters.

As part of strengthening the connections between UNU-FLORES and the wider United Nations network, Prof. Guenther was also one of the establishing Directors and the first Chair for UNU Water Network, which was initiated in 2019. In 2020, she was appointed UNU Senior Official for the Environmental Management Group (EMG).

Marc Wolfram is the Director of the Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development (IOER) in Dresden (Germany) and Professor of Spatial Development and Transformation at Technische Universität Dresden (since 2019). He is also Chair of the Dresden Leibniz Graduate School (DLGS) and Editor-in-chief of the open access journal Urban Transformations. Prior to his current position he worked in research and education as Associate Professor at Sungkyunkwan University (Korea) (2017-2019) and at Yonsei University (Korea) (2013-2017), Senior Researcher at IOER (2006-2012), and Postdoctoral Fellow at Maison des Sciences de l'Homme Paris Nord (France) (2005/06), and also as a Policy Consultant (2001-2005). He holds Diploma (Dipl.-Ing.) and Doctoral degrees from the University of Stuttgart in the field of city/urban, community and regional planning.

Marc is working on the dynamics of urban and regional change and the strategies and approaches for steering such change towards sustainability. His focus is on innovations in urban and regional governance, policy, planning and design that enable and guide system transitions. This entails a concern for diverse socio-technical and social-ecological systems converging in human settlements, and the internal and external factors driving or inhibiting their transformation across spatial scales.

 

Throughout his professional career, André Lindner has covered a range of fields from basic research on biodiversity, to applied and development-oriented aspects of climate change adaptation, to postgraduate education for sustainable development in environmental management, especially in developing countries. Since 2020, André has been working as Managing Director of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (comprises five faculties: Environmental Sciences, Civil Engineering, Architecture, Traffic and Transport Sciences, Business and Economics) at Technische Universität Dresden. Before that, he was able to deepen his experience in international and interdisciplinary exchange during his work at the Centre for International Postgraduate Studies of Environmental Management (CIPSEM). The courses organized by CIPSEM are characterized by their "multi-stakeholder" composition of participants. Experts from government, non-governmental organizations, science and business come and work together. The courses are designed as a platform for a sustainable North-South and South-South exchange. Prior, André was project coordinator of the "International Network on Climate Change (INCA): Understanding adaptation and mitigation strategies of tropical Andean people" at TU Dresden, and research associate within the project "Climate Change, landscape dynamics, land-use and natural resources in the Atlantic Forest of Rio de Janeiro" and has worked on "Biodiversity and integrated land-use management for economic and natural system stability in the Mata Atlântica of Rio de Janeiro" at the University of Leipzig.

 

Fields of work: Science Management, (Tropical) Ecology, Ecosystem Services & Restoration Ecology, Sustainable Development & System Tipping Points, Climate Change Adaptation, Environmental Education