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“What kind of world do we leave to our children and has man caused the unprecedented high concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere?” asks Mihkel Kangur, Director of the TU Institute of Ecology in this first One-Minute lecture video clip of the autumn season. He warns that in the last hundred years the damage caused by man to the environment is greater than ever.

“The central question of sustainable continuation is no longer how much oil do we have left or how should we sort our garbage,” noted Mihkel Kangur, a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Environmental Research. “The changing climate, decrease of biological diversity, fertile soils and availability of clean water are the critical issues that we have to solve. Changes in nature have occurred to an unprecedented extent in the last hundred years.”

The world tries to relieve the overuse of natural resources with new technological solutions and international agreements. However, the ecological footprints keep growing despite these efforts.

“Natural scientists alone cannot solve environmental problems –more and more these are becoming the problems of mankind,” said Kangur. “Guaranteeing the wellbeing, health and clean food that we are used to is becoming more and more costly. The solution for providing availability of both local and global natural resources and other services of ecosystems lies in changing our behaviour.”

As one of the solutions, Kangur suggests closer cooperation between different research fields. Tallinn University already offers continuing training in sustainability through education and several intra-university cooperation projects have begun, while at the same time the university is actively participating in international cooperation. Admission to Integrated Natural Science, which also includes the module of Sustainable Development, commences in 2015. For more information visit: