by Lara Teupen, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany.
Introduction to GEOMAR
Climate change, resource scarcity and other problems affect both us as well as our oceans. Corals, CO2 storage, biodiversity: there are many factors at play, and this is precisely what the GEOMAR Centre in Kiel is looking into. They are part of the Helmholtz Association and conduct research in all areas of marine science (About Us – GEOMAR, n.d.). But they don’t stop here. Their goal? A sustainable future that offers solutions to the pressing problems of today’s society.
Sustainable management & entrepreneurship
Before we start going into detail with the GEOMAR strategy, we are going to take a further look into sustainable management and entrepreneurship. When talking about sustainably managing a company or organisation, we mean meeting both the needs of the present and the future by balancing economic, social and environmental goals. However, sustainable entrepreneurship focuses on identifying, developing and growing new sustainable ideas to face current issues.
GEOMAR’s implementation
Firstly, they drafted up a milestone plan which includes their sustainability goals. Their newly formed sustainability committee uses it as a base and runs through the different steps. These include stakeholder and materiality analysis, climate management, sustainability strategy and a sustainability programme. Another step of their plan is the annually release of their sustainability report and emissions balance to create transparency (Nachhaltigkeitsmanagement, n.d.). Furthermore, the performance within the management is based on the ‘LeNa – sustainable research’ programme, where participants established a guide on sustainability management (LeNa, n.d.). Their active approach to be transparent in their progression and work on combining their management with environmental, social and economic aspects is a convincing template on how sustainable management can and should evolve in organisations or companies.
When concentrating on the sustainability entrepreneurship of GEOMAR, we should start off with their innovations. For example, their new sensors and MoLab are technologies the organisation has researched and created over time. They established new ways of researching certain gaps such as observations in the deep-sea over an extended period. The construction of “Modular Multidisciplinary Seafloor Observatory”, short MoLab, made this possible (IFM-GEOMAR Baut Ein Neuartiges Tiefsee-Observatorium, n.d.).
With their new ways of deriving data, GEOMAR developed a way to help find solutions internationally for current global issues by making the data publicly accessible. They create knowledge to find innovative solutions within their projects which are focusing on our environmental impact while some of them even allow for individual funding to generate a higher and faster development in their research fields (The GEOMAR Vision and Mission, n.d.).
Conclusion
Generally speaking, GEOMAR has many approaches to achieve their goal: Becoming more sustainable and creating a safer world for future generations. They function as a prime example for sustainable management & entrepreneurship and show the significance of the topic. Concluding from this, they also show the inevitability of sustainable management & entrepreneurship in study programmes, especially for the IBAE major which focuses repeatedly on new perspectives and critical thinking.
References
About us—GEOMAR. (n.d.). Retrieved 20 February 2026, from https://www.geomar.de/en/centre/about-us
IFM-GEOMAR baut ein neuartiges Tiefsee-Observatorium. (n.d.). Retrieved 21 February 2026, from https://www.geomar.de/news/article/ifm-geomar-baut-ein-neuartiges-tiefsee-observatorium
LeNa. (n.d.). LeNa Nachhaltig Forschen. Retrieved 21 February 2026, from https://www.nachhaltig-forschen.de/en/lena/
Nachhaltigkeitsmanagement. (n.d.). Retrieved 26 February 2026, from https://www.geomar.de/zentrum/struktur/nachhaltigkeitsmanagement
The GEOMAR vision and mission. (n.d.). Retrieved 20 February 2026, from https://www.geomar.de/en/centre/about-geomar/our-world-is-the-ocean
