The Future needs innovative sustainable solutions. Dies speech.

Dies Speech 2007

₁

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The motto of my short statement on the occasion of the 165th _{anniversary of our}

university is: The Future needs innovative sustainable solutions. Why? Why do I use these words that seem to have lost their meaning by not keeping track of the intention, as if the paint on the object is more important than the object itself.

The world is confronted with a problem with an impact that is unprecedented. The pictures you see on the screen are already familiar. Let us be honest they are not disturbing us that much. But they should, they should alarm us every time we are confronted with them. They make clear that we not only live on

the Earth, we have to live with the Earth. These pictures demonstrate an

important law of physics, a law you cannot escape from: The Conservation of Mass! In particular we note that by this governing rule the quality of the mass has changed. The transformed mass is alienated from the group of happy masses that return to their origin. It looks that this conservation law is competing in attention with the other one: The Conservation of Energy! At a first glance this looks like a happy situation: no energy is lost, but again the problem is the in the addendum. Yes no energy is lost but in the process the quality of the energy decreases.

There are important differences to the global effects of these laws.

On the Earth we receive energy from the outside, especially the Sun is sharing every day its wealth with us. And the gifts of the past are kept in storage in the form of fossil energy. This is, as Professor van der Hagen showed us, important, but the storage room is getting empty and the need for energy grows.

We do not receive mass from the outside, be it a stray comet and she is not welcome. That means that with transforming mass by a growing number of people we are on our way of changing the quality of mass and hence their natural life cycli on a large scale.

So in the act of the conservation of mass and energy the essential quality is modified. We cannot change this, but living with the Earth and using its mass and energy requires attention for this fact. The cumulative effect on the living conditions for all species constitutes the need for a sustainable development. Here research and reality meet. Many innovative solutions are driven by technological breakthroughs with a perspective in the future, but in reality we need the answers today. This means that we have to formulate our research question now for the answer tomorrow.

This takes time and I hope that our new government gives priority to the development of these answers, even if they are not directly

contributing to the political success of today.

Dies Speech 2007

₂

The life straw is a classic example of sustainable engineering. The straw purifies surface water and makes it drinkable through the simple action of sucking water through it. But children lack the lung power to suck water through the straw. A kind of bellows bulb has now been affixed to the outside of the straw. Children can squeeze it to help them suck the water. Costs: 2 euros. Benefits: a human life. We must continue to look for feats of engineering strength like these during our next Five-Year Anniversary!

We are doing this in many projects. One of the projects is a quinquennial jubilee book in which 10 employees of our university will travel to different places on our globe to look for other “straws”.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Developing sustainable solutions is a joint effort which requires intensive collaboration. To my scientific colleagues of our university and of course to my scientific friends of other Dutch universities I say join us in this quest.

Innovation in this case has no commercial impact; maybe it is time that we realize that we have to innovate to survive.

I thank you for your attention. Prof. Dr. J.T. Fokkema

Rector Magnificus