On May 9th 2006, the Wittenberg Center has organized a dialogue on “Concepts of Sustainability”. Prof. Dr. Andreas Suchanek, Board member of the WCGE and professor for “Sustainability and Global Ethics” at the HHL – Leipzig Graduate School for Management, welcomed representatives of organizations from politics, business, academia and civil society, who presented and discussed their specific concept of sustainability.

In detail, the following organizations were present at the workshop: Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt), BUND – Confederacy for Environmental Protection Germany, Federation of the Chemical Industry in Germany, IMUG-Institute, the Ministry for Agriculture and Environment of Saxony-Anhalt as well as the Center for Environmental Research Leipzig-Halle. With an active participation of all representatives and in a constructive atmosphere, an animated discussion took place, which provided also room for contrary perspectives.

The workshop pointed out, how complex the subject of sustainable development is, even after 20 years of public discussion. The relevance the classic dimensions – economic, ecologic and social – was highlighted. Although conceptual agreement on the subject are still ahead, considerable progress has been made with respect to concrete measurements – e.g. the assessment of companies in terms of sustainability.

Once again, the discussion showed, how important open dialogues within small groups are in order to (better) understand divergent positions and dismantle old lines of conflict. In a certain sense, such kind of dialogue in itself constitutes an important contribution to sustainability as a continuous social learning process. Enabling and expanding such a process is indeed vitally important, especially in a time, when a common understanding of basic social values is to be acquired time and again in ever-changing environments.