Honorary Doctorate Prof.Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt

Overview & Synopsis

On 15 October 2020, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, Prof. Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt received a Radboud honorary doctorate in recognition of his work on strategic sustainable development. This edition includes honorary promotor Han van Krieken’s laudatio, Karl-Henrik Robèrt’s acceptance speech, and a detailed recollection of his professional history. Trained as an oncologist, Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt became aware in the last decades of the twentieth century that systematically increasing air, soil and water pollution in the environment were threatening global health. It became his goal to make people aware of the environmental problems and to develop a framework for sustainable development. In 1989, he founded 'The Natural Step', an organisation that initiated the development of the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development, which later became a topic for further refinements through systematic international cooperation between scientists, and leaders from public and private sectors. The international hub for this work is Blekinge Technical Institute, where Dr Robèrt holds his chair. For his work, Robèrt received in 2000 the Blue Planet Prize - the 'Nobel Prize' for sustainability. Honorary promotor Han van Krieken: “It is for a variety of reasons that Radboud University wants to honour Professor Karl-Henrik Robèrt. Our university’s new Strategic Plan defines explicitly our ‘responsibility for the world in which we live’. It states as one of our goals that ‘we want to be in the vanguard when it comes to achieving the United Nations’ sustainable development goals and to make our own contribution to the changes needed in the world in the coming decades’. Professor Robèrt can show us ways in which we can translate these goals more effectively.”