What happens when familiar orders begin to crumble and the future appears to be not so much a space of possibility but a series of crises? This question was at the heart of the Richard von Weizsäcker Forum 2025. Over the course of five days, some 70 Fellows of the Robert Bosch Academy met with international and German guests in Berlin and Frankfurt to jointly reflect on how to shape social, political, and ecological change under conditions of pervasive uncertainty.

The Forum is the annual gathering of the Fellows of the Academy. It provides them with an opportunity to engage in a dialogue across cohorts, disciplines, and regions and to converse with each other in a safe environment. It offers a space for reflection, controversial debate, and new connections. At the same time, it allows engagement with outside perspectives: through conversations with political decision-makers and representatives of civil society, business, science, and the arts and culture sector, and through encounters with places where global challenges manifest as local realities.

Another spotlight of the Forum was on digital technologies – in particular the political, ecological, and geopolitical implications of the rapid expansion of AI infrastructures. The conversations about energy consumption, resource dependencies, and digital sovereignty made clear how closely technological innovation is interwoven with global power relations and environmental costs.

Here, the focus was less on technological solutions than on fundamental questions such as: How can we imagine innovation without pushing planetary boundaries even further? What is the responsibility of governments, businesses, and civil society in a field defined by asymmetric dependencies? And what are the blind spots of a debate that frequently uncouples progress from its material conditions?

The Richard von Weizsäcker Forum 2025 was not intended as a place to deliver ready-made results. At its core, it was about questions, tensions, and lateral thinking – and the willingness to tolerate ambiguity. It became clear from many conversations that pessimism is a privilege that not all can afford. 

Agency arises where people assume responsibility and view themselves as effective agents despite uncertainty. 

What remains are not final propositions but a shared thinking space: the question of how to (re-)imagine the future under conditions of crisis, inequality, and ecological constraints – and what forms of collaboration, leadership, and imagination are necessary to do so.