Nico Stehr

In 2011, Stehr created the European Center for Sustainability Research (ECS) at Zeppelin University.

Stehr is one of the authors of the Hartwell Paper: A new direction for climate policy after the crash of 2009. The Hartwell Paper arises from a meeting convened by Professor Gwyn Prins of the LSE in February 2010 to consider the implications of developments in climate policy in late 2009.

Climate policy, as it has been understood and practised by many governments of the world under the Kyoto Protocol approach, has failed to produce any discernible real world reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases in fifteen years. The underlying reason for this is that the UNFCCC/Kyoto model was structurally flawed and doomed to fail because it systematically misunderstood the nature of climate change as a policy issue between 1985 and 2009. However, the currently dominant approach has acquired immense political momentum because of the quantities of political capital sunk into it. But in any case the UNFCCC/Kyoto model of climate policy cannot continue because it crashed in late 2009. The Hartwell Paper sets and reviews this context; but doing so is not its sole or primary purpose.

Stehr received a PhD in sociology from the University of Oregon in 1970. Between 1967 and 2000, he taught at American and Canadian universities. His last appointment in Canada was that of fellow in Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Study der University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. During the academic year 2002-2003 he was Paul-Lazarsfeld-Professor (a visiting appointment) at the University of Vienna. He is Senior Research Fellow of the Sustainable Development Research Institute, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, a fellow of the Fellow the Center for Advanved Study of the Humanities, Essen, Germany, editor of the Canadian Journal of Sociology (until 2006), a Fellow of the Royal Society (Canada) and the European Academy of the Sciences and the Arts.

Nico Stehr (born 19 March 1942) was "Karl Mannheim Professor for Cultural Studies" at the Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen / Germany and Founding Director of the European Center for Sustainability Research.