SWEDEN

For the past century, IVA – the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences – has awarded the Grand Gold Medal and the Gold Medal annually to individuals who, through outstanding contributions in technology, economics, business and society, have contributed to create a better society.

At their annual ceremony on Friday, 29 October, IVA’s patron, His Majesty King Carl Gustaf of Sweden, is presenting the Grand Gold Medal to Sverker Sörlin, a leading environmental historian focusing on global climate change based at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, “for his outstanding achievements as an innovative researcher, research leader and active public debater and for his significant contributions and deep commitment to research and higher education.”

In 2018 University World News reported on his achievement in having three European Research Council grants awarded to his research group at KTH.

“Sörlin, a prolific writer and cross-scientifically oriented scholar, has taken on an ambitious task: To sort out, through four ‘trajectories’, a global history approach to understanding the correspondence on ‘humanity’s relation to planetary conditions and constraints and how it has become understood as a governance issue’”, University World News reported at the time.

Sörlin’s key argument is that global environmental governance is inseparable from the rise of a planetary Earth systems science and a knowledge-informed understanding of global change.

“There is a need to understand the relationship between science and global environmental governance,” Sörlin argues, “notably how scientific ideas and concepts influence policy change and how Earth history and societal, human history interact in shaping global environmental governance.”

Sörlin is professor of environmental history in the environmental humanities laboratory, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, and his ongoing research includes the historical and contemporary science politics of climate change, the cryosphere, and the Anthropocene.

He currently directs the European Research Council Advanced Grant project SPHERE – Study of the Planetary Human Earth Relationship: The Rise of Global Environmental Governance (2018-2023).

Among his recent books are the co-edited Grounding Urban Natures: Histories and Futures of Urban Ecologies (MIT Press 2019), and Ice Humanities: Living, Thinking and Working with Ice (Manchester University Press, 2022), and the forthcoming The Human Environment: Stockholm and the Rise of Global Environmental Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2022) with Eric Paglia.

Sörlin was taken seriously ill with COVID-19 on 9 March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, and he published his experiences and reflections, relating his case to people contracting the illness at other places in the world, in op ed articles – “A collective lesson learned”- in Dagens Nyheter in Stockholm on 5 April and in the Oslo Morgenbladet on 29 April, 2020.

“It is not unimportant which way we are choosing for our pandemic. Not only for how well we manage to take care of those who are most vulnerable, but also on a deeper level for the future of democracy. And as Slavoj Zizek has said: ‘The challenge for Europe is to show that what China has done [with the pandemic], can be achieved at a more transparent and democratic way’,” he said.

‘Endless curiosity’

Professor Johan Kuylenstierna who is senior advisor at the Stockholm Environment Institute and chair of the Swedish Climate Policy Council told University World News: “Sverker Sörlin has been a member of the Swedish Climate Policy Council since its establishment in January 2018. His contribution to our work cannot be overrated.

“Sverker brings unique competence covering many disciplines combined with a thorough understanding of the systems’ perspectives.

“In addition, Sverker has a personality driven by an endless curiosity and strives to always learn more, to understand different perspectives and dimensions related to complex issues such as climate change impacts and societal transitions.

“This spurs open and explorative discussions when we meet in the Council; something badly needed in a debate landscape that tends to be increasingly polarised. I am so pleased that Sverker has been awarded this Gold Medal, it is well deserved.”

Professor David Budtz Pedersen at the Department of Communication and Psychology at Aalborg University in Denmark told University World News: “Sverker Sörlin has achieved what only few scholars are capable of. Creating a genuine integrative knowledge environment at KTH which brings together history, ethics, design, cultural studies and climate research.

“He has been a frontier researcher in the field of environmental humanities and science policy studies, and he has taken an extraordinary interest in promoting humanities as a source for genuine reflection, conversation and problem-solving in society.

“The importance of what Sverker has achieved cannot be overestimated. He has brought together scholarship in the humanities with climate action and policy in ways that will have impact on the future of Scandinavian and international science. He is a true inspiration for our work on the public value of humanities in Denmark and globally.”

Humanities ‘more and more essential’

Sörlin told University World News: “I am very honoured by this prize. It is in a sense remarkable that it goes to a scholar of the humanities and of history, although I see this as a sign of the times.”

He said what used to be regarded as problems exclusively of science, engineering and medicine are increasingly regarded as so complex that they require ‘deep collaboration’.

“Leadership in tomorrow’s society is not just to seek out the path of progress. It is just as much to manage crisis and troubles. In that respect, knowledge from the humanities is becoming more and more essential.

“I suppose the academy has found that I am trying to find ways of doing precisely that.

“These are issues for research policy and climate policy to deal with and in my prediction they will require serious discussion about research priorities. We always need better technologies, but above all we need wiser societies and more responsible leadership. The humanities can help immensely in that regard.”