The third and last session in the Let’s Explore: collaboration with the fossil fuels industry was held in Impulse.
Photo: Resource.
WUR will not rigorously sever all its ties with the fossil industry but will alter its course. A new committee is to determine more stringent criteria for partnerships and will assess potential partners and projects. Projects that are already underway will stay on course.
After two so-called Let’s Explore sessions on the partnership with the fossil industry and three protests where Forum was occupied, WUR promised to make a decision on these partnerships. Board member Rens Buchwaldt has announced today that the executive board followed up on the Let’s Explore sessions by discussing the issue with various parties, such as the management board and the knowledge institute group directors, and has now reached a decision: there will be no moratorium -as in severing all ties- on fossil partnerships, and a committee headed by Professor of Environmental Systems Analysis Carolien Kroeze will be established. This committee is to determine stricter rules to test whether potential partnerships contribute to WUR’s ideology.
Buchwaldt: ‘We already assess individual projects. This is done by, among others, the collaborating scientists and teams. Partnerships must contribute to the transitions on which we focus, such as the climate transition or the protein transition. We must be able to maintain our independence. We have now decided that we will include considerations as to what partner we will work with in these assessments. This does not just affect the fossil industry, but we want our future collaborations to be with partners that join us in achieving these transitions. To this end, we will establish stricter rules.’
We need stronger criteria, and we aim to have these formulated shortly
Rens Buchwaldt, Executive Board member
What rules or criteria might these be? ‘That is a challenging question. We are not the only knowledge institute struggling with this question. We have gathered WUR employees from different levels within the organisation to form a committee to help us formulate these criteria. The committee will detain the considerations involved in making decisions. There are already some ideas, climate responsibility, for example. This means that businesses must adhere to the global climate agreements. The committee will publish its findings in the fall. They will analyse fossil partnerships first but will also take a look at other associations. Our position is that we need stronger criteria, and we aim to have these formulated shortly. We do not aim to exclude any partners right away. That would be at odds with our motto, “Finding answers together”.
Reactions from the WUR community will follow later today.
It’s been 5 days that the Board announced its decision to form a committee of WUR employees from different levels within the organisation to help formulate criteria. Several groups (like S4F-wageningen) have immediately commented on this, partly at the request of Resource, and under time pressure, but those reactions are still not published. This is at odds with the concluding sentence “Reactions from the WUR community will follow later today” but also at odds with the anticipation of how the Board’s statement is perceived by students and staff. I’m eager to read an explanation for this delay.
Today Ignas. It took some days to find a wider range of opinions.
Hello Willem, you mean to actually find people who are not critical about and not disappointed with the decision? Indeed they might be hard to find.