The world is in the grip of a housing crisis of historic proportions. The World Cities Report 2026 (UN-Habitat), launched at the World Urban Forum 13 (WUF13) earlier in May this year, left us genuinely struck by the scale: 3.4 billion people lack adequate housing, the global deficit grew from 251 to 288 million units between 2010 and 2023, and climate hazards could destroy 167 million more homes by 2040. Yet what moved us equally was seeing, across five days of the forum, the breadth of local solutions from every region of the world, approaches grounded in community, place and governance, yet pointing toward the same conclusion: that this crisis demands systemic change, not just technical fixes. It was against this backdrop that we arrived in Baku not only to witness the debate, but to contribute to shaping it.

Fernando Túlio Franco: Brownfields, Bus Corridors and the Climate–Housing Nexus

I arrived with a dual agenda: a WUF Academy keynote on The Climate-Housing Nexus Dialogue, exploring how decarbonisation and socio-territorial inequalities can be addressed together, and a C40/Arup/Urban Partners panel on brownfield regeneration, Europe’s most underused lever for tackling the housing and climate crises. My presentation drew on the Sarajevo Code design studio and a São Paulo case study, weaving together legal frameworks, social housing policies, participatory governance, and Land Value Capture mechanisms.

Mashael Yazdanie: Urban Energy, Sufficiency and Resilience

I brought an integrated urban energy, sufficiency, and resilience perspective to four WUF13 sessions, with a focus on housing, governance, and citizen participation: a UNDP-hosted dialogue on resilient housing systems; two sessions on citizen participation and disaster preparedness at the NGO Pavilion; and a session on translating global housing commitments into local action at the Azerbaijan Pavilion, co-convened with Tural Aliyev. My research asks a question rarely posed at large forums: how much is enough to live well within ecological limits? In Baku, I opened conversations about the governance and citizen engagement levers needed to make sufficiency a viable urban strategy.

Tural Aliyev: Governing the Housing Crisis Across Scales

I spoke across three panels on citizen participation, disaster preparedness, and cross-scale housing governance. Being in Baku carried a particular resonance: as a Swiss researcher with Azerbaijani origins at ETH Zurich, I embody the bridge between local knowledge and international academic excellence that WUF13 sought to build.

What Comes Next

A further highlight was the Swiss Ambassador reception, bringing together SECO representatives, senior UN officials, and researchers: a vivid example of science–policy–practice in action.

WUF13 is not an endpoint. The Baku Call to Action calls for housing to be reprioritised as a human right, for stronger state stewardship over land and finance, and for the next decade of World Urban Forums to be a decade of action. Bridging academy and city, connecting evidence to policy, designing at the intersection of climate, housing, and society; this is what we bring back from Baku. The work continues.

It’s not every day you get to meet in person a fellow Swede who happens to also be a rockstar in the world of climate science, and a generally lovely human being. Having witnessed him in action previously in grand speaking arenas including TED and the World Economic Forum, it was a bit surreal to find myself on stage next to him, co‑moderating our Global Lecture on “Taking the Pulse of the Planet.” I am talking about none other than the legend that is Johan Rockström, the man behind the Planetary Boundaries Framework and co-creator of the recently launched Planetary Health Check. My colleague Chris Luebkeman and I were joined by ETH Assistant Professor Millie Chapman to hear from and talk to the man himself on the occasion of the inaugural Climate Week Zurich.

Here are the most important things he had to say in an hour that flew by and was by no means enough to go through everything that needed to be said on one of the key topics of our time.

We are living in the Anthropocene, a new geological age in which human activity fundamentally shapes the Earth system. Humanity and nature are now fully intertwined, co-evolving across planetary scales. This means that the stability of our societies is inseparable from the stability of the Earth’s life-support systems.

That stability is increasingly under pressure. Already today, with an increase by around 1.4°C since the pre-industrial era, extreme events are already disrupting lives and livelihoods worldwide. Beyond this, risks accelerate non-linearly: tipping points are hard-wired into the Earth system, and crossing them could trigger cascading feedback loops. This raises the possibility of a “hothouse Earth” trajectory well beyond the 2-3°C pathway currently projected, and ultimately beyond conditions in which modern societies can function.

These dynamics point to a deeper issue: the erosion of Earth’s resilience. Systems such as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) illustrate how destabilisation could produce profound and uneven regional impacts, while also feeding back into the global climate system. Importantly, these processes are interconnected: disruptions in one part of the Earth system amplify pressures elsewhere.

The Planetary Health Check provides the clearest scientific diagnosis to date. It tracks the state of nine critical Earth system processes, the “vital organs” that regulate stability and resilience, and shows that seven of nine planetary boundaries have now been breached, with pressures continuing to intensify. These boundaries function as guardrails for a safe operating space: once crossed, the Earth system moves into a zone of increasing risk, where tipping points, irreversible change, and loss of resilience become more likely.

What emerges is a stark but actionable insight: the planet’s “vital signs are flashing red”, yet the framework also shows where intervention is possible. Because these systems are tightly interconnected, stabilising the Earth system requires coordinated action across climate, biodiversity, land, water and pollution; not in isolation, but as part of a whole-Earth approach to staying within a safe operating space for humanity.

Millie Chapman brought in the decision-making dimension linked to the issues highlighted by Johan to the fore, by sharing her work at the Environmental Policy Lab of ETH Zurich. She examines how policies, institutions, and digital technologies shape outcomes for people and ecosystems. The work is structured in 3 focus areas:

Cooperation across scales: understanding what drives coordinated environmental action across actors, sectors, and governance levels. 

Decision-making under uncertainty: designing robust, data-informed strategies and policies that remain effective despite complex ecological and social uncertainty. 

Justice in an algorithmic era: examining how data and digital tools shape environmental decisions, with a focus on fairness, accountability, and bias.

Her point was that how decisions are made matters; the information decision-makers have to hand, on which to base their decisions, is the key to them developing effective and equitable strategies to meet global biodiversity targets. Data and algorithms can potentially reshape our management of environmental systems, and AI can help us move towards more sustainable and just futures in the context of environmental justice.

The well-attended event could have gone way past the scheduled hour, as was highlighted by the large number of poignant questions from the audience we did not manage to get to at the end. We closed the evening with a touch of optimism to add to the sense of urgency. Climate Week Zurich is a nice example of the local community getting together with global representatives from business, research and policy to accelerate climate impact in everyday life. Our event was a fitting addition to the inaugural schedule of activities taking place around the city, illustrating ETH Zurich’s commitment to sustainability.

Check out the pictures from the event here: Meet ETH Flickr

I hope this glimpse encourages you to come to a future event. I find that with our Global Lecture Series, we begin a new journey every time, giving ourselves pause to reflect on key topics on the global agenda and learning from individuals with remarkable clarity and foresight. I invite you all to come and join us! The next event will be on 10 September on the topic of research, with Nature’s Magdalena Skipper and ETH Zurich’s Annette Oxenius.

I joined ETH Zurich as project director for the Plant4Value project following three of my professional passions: collaboration, sustainability and food. This project represents more than just a research endeavour; it is a collaborative effort to address one of the most pressing challenges of our time: the sustainable transformation of our food systems.

While the scientific community agrees on the environmental and health benefits of a more plant-based diet and production system, the transition is fraught with challenges. We face economic dependencies which entail high barriers for farmers seeking to change, limited consumer demand for new alternatives, and an often polarized public discourse. These are the major obstacles and systemic barriers we seek to overcome by an evidence-based, collaborative and solution-focused approach.

Unlocking change through collaboration

ETH’s commitment to combining rigorous scientific inquiry with practical, real-world application is the foundation of our project.

I believe that successful transformation is rooted in collaborative, interdisciplinary work and partnerships. We recognise and heed to the complexity of the food system by including diverse stakeholders across the entire value chain. Plant4Value operates on a transdisciplinary model, bringing together 24 partners, including farmers, food processors, retailers, and policymakers. We are not just studying the problem; we are working with the people which all are essential to co-creating the pathways to a more resilient food future.

Project director Daniela Hoffmann and scientific project director Lukas Fesenfeld are leading and coordinating the transciplinary project, which entails collaboration across the entire food value chain. Photo Credits: Philippe Grob

Piloting real-world solutions

For me, a distinctive part of Plant4Value is our commitment to experimental evaluation for evidence-based change. Over the next five years, we will be piloting and testing a range of innovative levers:

• Farmer Support: Using an experimental budget and/or site-specific consulting to de-risk the shift toward more plant-based food production.
• Technological Innovation: Real-world testing of novel technologies to create new economic value in plant-based food value chains.
• Demand Generation: Implementing choice-architectural and market-based interventions to better understand market potential, adoption and substitution rates.

Our core mission at ETH Zurich is to systematically evaluate the social, economic, and environmental impacts of these interventions. This evidence base is critical for providing policymakers and stakeholders with the data they need to enact effective, efficient, and scalable strategies for a more sustainable food system.

While our focus is Switzerland, the insights generated have global relevance. Every nation food system stakeholder from nation states, to farmers, to multinational companies is seeking pathways to a resilient food future. Plant4Value offers a systematic model for how science, policy, and practice can overcome inertia and foster plant-based value chains.

This transdisciplinary project is funded by the Mercator Switzerland Foundation, the Seedling Foundation, and the Minerva Foundation. It is hosted by the Albert Einstein School of Public Policy at ETH Zurich, in collaboration with the World Food System Center at ETH Zurich. Read more about the project here: https://einstein-school.ethz.ch/en/forschung/forschungsprojekte/Plant4Value.html

In an era of turbulence, policymakers and scientists must collaborate to strengthen multilateralism and rebuild trust in science. At the UN-ETH Forum, UN policymakers and ETH researchers came together to drive this agenda forwards.

On 20-21 October 2025, ETH Zurich hosted the inaugural UN-ETH Forum, a two-day conference held under the theme “Science and Policy in Turbulent Times.” The event assembled policymakers, practitioners, and researchers from both institutions and beyond. Panels and workshops across three thematic tracks – Strengthening Global Peace and Security, Ensuring Responsible Digitalization, Reaching the Sustainable Development Goals – explored how science and policy can work together to address the world’s most pressing challenges.

The Forum is part of the UN-ETH Partnership, which was launched in October 2023. At the opening plenary of the Forum, Professor Joël Mesot, President of ETH Zurich, and Guy Ryder, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Policy, reaffirmed their shared commitment to strengthening collaboration between their organisations and underscored the urgency of this task.

Over the past two years, the Partnership has moved from intention to action, with several new programmes having been created and launched. The UN-ETH Incubator, a programme that sources use cases from UN teams and pairs them with relevant ETH research groups, was launched earlier this year. Five new project-based collaborations were presented at the Forum, along with six additional proposals from the Incubator showcased at a dedicated poster session. 

Another important programme is the UN-ETH Student Team, an extra-curricular initiative that connects ETH students with UN practitioners to collaborate on real-world projects. Launched in summer 2025, it has already initiated one project – a data-analysis platform developed in collaboration with the UN Digital Library – and is preparing to launch two more. 

The Forum attracted considerable interest. Policymakers and practitioners from UN agencies headquartered in New York, Rome, Quito, and Addis Ababa joined counterparts from the Swiss government and from Swiss-based institutions. From the scientific community, early-career researchers from ETH Zurich, Cambridge, King’s College London, and several Swiss universities participated in the debates and presented their latest findings—spanning topics such as food security, artificial intelligence in mental health, and sustainable urban development.

A highlight of the event was the level of interest and engagement of students and young researchers. Members of the UN-ETH Student Team hosted a session with UN and ETH representatives to showcase how students can get involved and what to expect from working at the science-policy interface. Workshops such as the one led by the Swiss Delegation to the FAO World Food Forum Youth Assembly further underlined the importance of youth engagement in shaping sustainable futures. Overall, the UN-ETH Forum helped build momentum for new and ongoing collaborations, forged fresh ties between science and policy communities, and created a strong sense of common purpose. Moving from intention to action to impact, we are all curious to see what the newly initiated collaborations will deliver.  

To find out more about the UN-ETH Partnership and get involved, visit the “Engage” tab at https://un-eth.ethz.ch

Get to know the Center for Security Studies at https://css.ethz.ch/en/

The Catalyst for Change

Hi! My name is Bettina and I recently graduated from ETH in environmental science and policy. How on earth did I get here? It was actually more of a coincidence than a planned step in my career, much like getting into politics at a young age.

How so? After having flown as a flight attendant for two years, I figured I wanted to do something that felt more purposeful than tending to passengers’ needs even though I did feel a sense of purpose at times– for example when I tended to people who were part of an American immigration project: They saw electronics for the first time in their life and had to be told how to plug in headphones; and a mom had to be helped who had never used a diaper for her children before.

Without giving it much time and thought, I met someone who had studied the same. It sounded interesting along with the allegedly pleasant, cooperative mindset of people who went for the same studies. My career advisor told me to rather go for some hard science, like maths or biology and do an MBA afterwards, because environmental science was nothing really concrete, scratching the surface of a lot of topics.

Academic Pursuit at ETH

Well, he was right about that part. To show how vaguely defined the studies are in peoples’ minds, this is what a different set of people think I do as an environmental scientist:

Jokes aside, what environmental studies allow you is to get the fundamental basics of all hard sciences and learn to think systemically. That I see as the main benefit of my studies: the way we learned to think.

What do I mean by that? While a biologist might see the ecological niche for a certain species, the geographer sees how that certain ecological niche came about, the mathematician delivers the tools to calculate and measure it, an environmental scientist needs to understand all these factors on a general level, make the connections and often apply it to human life.

Real-World Application and Discoveries

Last week, I was discussing with the professor of quaternary geomorphology (glaciers and how they formed our landscape), how gravel pits have been filled around Zurich. Imagine Regensdorf, which is densely populated now, had to fill up its gravel pits to make room for

settlements. Now instead of taking any kind of cheap material, what has been done is to take gravel material from digging holes for houses (from nearby places). How neat and efficient and cost-effective a solution is that? These are things that get me excited: concrete, effective solutions to real-world problems.

My professor, seeing my awe, said: “We quaternary geologists get really frenzied up by looking at rocks and analyzing them and this is what excites you.” Nice to see how people and their knowledge complement each other.

Challenges Along the Way

Because of being uncertain whether I was learning something that could actually serve my initial goal, moving towards doing something “more purposeful”, along with little vacation and tight requirements of ETH, I seriously thought about quitting several times. But I pushed through and I’m glad I did. One important factor that kept me going were the regularly occurring excursions where what was learned could actually be applied and put into practice to make a difference in real life. Or attending ETH week, where basically a group of overexcitedly motivated nerds works on a project about a real-world problem for a week.

At this point, I would like to point out a rather inconvenient truth – studying at ETH is tough and a shocking high number of people studying with me actually went into burnout, even I was close to it at some point and my counsellor back then was wondering what was going on at ETH, because she allegedly had many clients from ETH. Having said all that, it is reassuring to know that this problematic is addressed with projects such as wie gETH’s? by VSETH. This is a representative study about mental well-being at ETH, for students and employees alike and had been done already in 2018. The results led to improvements to tackle exactly aforementioned problematic, e.g., more peer-mentoring programs or changes in study regulations.

Career Reflections and Opportunities

So where do I stand now, after my studies? Let me explain first how I came to today: along with family planning (I am a mom), I was trying hard to choose the right career path.

ETH offers many great opportunities to help shape this decision. Such as doing programs at the FAO in Rome (for editors: picture 2), or in my department, D-USYS, being relatively free to choose the direction of one’s thesis. I was always interested in development and cooperation, so I went for it and thanks to that I figured out that this sector/world is not for me, the reasons for which would go beyond the bounds of this blog post.

Another route I was taking, was due to getting into an entrepreneurial program (again by chance), rooted in ETH. I learned a lot of essential things (how to “think business”, something that just didn’t fit in our curriculum, but would be vital in a capitalist world) that I know I will use later in my life.

Another thing I was wondering about, was whether to go into consulting, as I do feel the need to bring across what I actually learned. I found it intriguing, but not easily combinable with being a mom.

However, coming from ETH, I got into consulting recruitment events fairly easily, so I could attend the Sustainable Switzerland event last year and even briefly meet Gro Harlem Brundtland, a sustainability legend, due to her chairing the UN commission which defined the term “sustainable development” in 1987 as it is used today.

I also felt at the conference, which was more of a business and less academic setting how prestigious our institution is regarded. It said BCG and ETH on my name tag, and people treated me differently than they use to without this specific name tag, they came and talked to me! This never happened at another conference before – it seems like the hard work of the last half decade is paying off in some sense at least. 😉  

So, consulting wasn’t the right path either, how did my career continue then? Again, by chance, in my last master’s year I was asked to substitute as a high school teacher. This is something that feels purposeful, aligned with my talents, and combinable with being a mother: Becoming a teacher for young people who want to learn something and guide them in a sense, trying to bring across systemic thinking and also thinking out of the box while hopefully making them excited about science.

So, this is where ETH has taken me for now. I will start off learning how to teach people (yes, ETH also offers a teaching diploma) and trying to become really good at it, while I will keep one foot in the sustainability scene. To all you readers out there – do you have any projects in the sustainability scene and feel like I could contribute? Please reach out to me at: bhaenny@ethz.ch .

Looking Ahead

Whoever of you knows Richard Feynman’s famous “Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher» might remember that he proposed the following: If we were to only pass on one scientific principle to next generations, it would be about the principle that everything is made up of the same set of particles.

Why on earth do I bring this up? Well, to me it feels like ETH – metaphorically speaking –  has given me the knowledge that everything is made up of particles. So now I have the privilege to know what I need to explore the planet and find where, with my talents, I can be content and best contribute.

Many scientists are motivated by contributing to the betterment of society. However, scientific research often comes at an environmental cost, mainly concerning energy use and waste. At ETH, most Scope 3 emissions come from labs and equipment. To cut these emissions, ETH is participating in a pilot scheme for LEAF, a laboratory sustainability certification program developed at University College London. 19 labs across ETH received their Bronze, Silver, and Gold LEAF certificates at the end of January 2024. 

“Educating and inspiring people is the most important” says Dr. Miriam Filippi, a senior scientist at the Soft Robotics Lab (D-MAVT). As Sustainability Officer, she steered the group to a Gold-level LEAF certificate through integrating sustainability into everyday lab life. “Your last thought in the middle of an experiment is ‘how will the world be in 10 years?'”, she explains, “and so there is a need to get routines to be sustainable.” Filippi also created the “Green Roboticist” award within the group to motivate members and “make sustainable practices more respected.”  

LEAF actions range from using recycling bins to optimizing equipment energy use and actively reducing plastic waste. A well-organised group may already be implementing many sustainable actions. “It was less work than expected,” says Sabine Diedrich, lab manager at the Lab of Toxicology (D-HEST). Together with PhD student Jasmina Büchel, she steered the group to a Gold LEAF certificate. The online LEAF platform offers tips to get started, but Diedrich stresses the importance of networking and sharing experiences to create momentum and progress on a larger scale.  

Despite best efforts, the reality of scientific research means that some aspects, such as reducing single-use plastic waste, can be difficult to change. “There’s still so much waste,” Büchel laments. Filippi also notes that “connecting good sterility practice to sustainability” can be challenging and is filled with compromises. However, many groups certified in the LEAF pilot reuse ‘single-use’ materials such as plastics and aluminium where possible, and try to opt for reusable alternatives where possible. 

“Labs not yet in LEAF should know that with a little thought, significant reductions of single-use plastic items and electricity can be achieved,” emphasises Elisa Dultz, a senior scientist in the Weis lab (D-BIOL) and member of the ETH/UZH Greenlab group. “You can become part of the community that is interested in change by starting the discussion in your lab and connecting to others”. The ETH GreenLabs program, run by the ETH Sustainability Office and the Greenlab Zürich group, aims to eventually LEAF-review all ETH labs, and work together to build on existing initiatives, ultimately promoting sustainability across all labs.