While the natural scientific conferences of my Foundation bore the imprint of Ernst Peter Fischer, the scientific advisor at my Foundation, those within the field of the social sciences and humanities bear the unmistakable signature of Hans Joas. The book arising from the third conference, ‘The Cultural Values of Europe’, which he directed, has now run to four editions and appeared in English in 2008.

The fifth conference, ‘Secularization and the World Religions’, was also planned and realized by Hans Joas in exemplary fashion. I would like to express my personal thanks to him both for this and for his editorship of the present volume.

Attentive readers of the Forum für Verantwortung series may wonder what has become of the planned activities of my Foundation aimed at informing and mobilizing civil society with respect to the topic of sustainability. Guided by the motto ‘The courage to achieve sustainability’, this initiative has now taken on clear forms. I first asked renowned scholars to provide an account, comprehensible to the general reader, of the state of research and possible options for action with respect to twelve topics crucial to the future of our planet, with one book devoted to each topic. The twelve volumes originally appeared in German in 2007. They are now published in English by Haus Publishing and tackle the following topics: Our Planet: How Much More Can Earth Take? (Jill Jäger); Feeding the Planet: Environmental Protection Through Sustainable Agriculture (Klaus Hahlbrock).