Born in Eutin, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany in 1967, Hubertus Paetow first qualified as an agricultural engineer. Following his studies in agricultural sciences in Göttingen and Kiel, he was managing director of an arable farm near Kiel until 2005. Since then he has been running his own farming business with a focus on agriculture and seed production in Finkenthal-Schlutow (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania).
Alongside various offices in associations and local politics, Paetow became Vice President of the German Agricultural Society (DLG) and Chair of the DLG Test Centre in 2015 and has been DLG President since 2018.
A member of the German Council for Sustainable Development since January 2020, Hubertus Paetow was reappointed for a further term by Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz in January 2023.
Three questions for Hubertus Paetow
Let’s get to it: What does sustainability mean to you? What do you associate with the term?
Hubertus Paetow: Sustainable development means facilitating the best possible living conditions for everyone without compromising the potential for future generations. But we will have to step up our game pretty drastically to achieve this when it comes to the interplay of the economy, environmental protection and social safeguards.
What is your personal priority in your work as part of the Council for Sustainable Development?
More than most, the agricultural and food sector is caught between economic payoffs and socially just natural resource conservation. As part of my work in the RNE, I am determined to translate these tensions into targeted policy together with the other Council members, while as president of a professional body, my focus is on finding innovative real-world solutions.
In the context of sustainability, what do you believe will pose the greatest challenge in the coming years?
For so many of us, sustainability has always been the sustainability of ‘others’ – indeed it lends itself well to instrumentalisation for other political goals. Building the right sustainability indicators into our functioning social market economy is the only way to change this. Only when we properly evaluate and put a price on the future we are currently consuming will each and every one of us be able to orient our behaviour towards sustainability.
Curriculum vitae
Hubertus Paetow detailed CV available to download (PDF, 68 KB)
Quote
“Sustainable development means facilitating the best possible living conditions without compromising the potential for future generations. This is only achievable if we build the right sustainability indicators into our functioning social market economy.”
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