Humans of PAP: Robin Blersch

#HumansofWUR platform introduces Robin Blersch. He is student of the MSc programme Governance of Sustainability Transformations and a student assistant in a NWO VIDI project with Prof. Dr Robbert Biesbroek and Jetske Bonenkamp, MSc:

Robin Blersch:
“Right now, I’m working as a student assistant, supporting a PhD project on climate change assessment with the PAP chair group at Wageningen University. It feels good to finally do something meaningful. I found it by regularly checking job sites, reaching out to professors, and making sure people knew I existed. It’s flexible, pays well, and gives me the chance to be in an academic environment where I can learn and grow. This is exactly what I was looking for.”

“My journey here started long before Wageningen. Volunteering in Peru completely changed my perspective. Experiencing my friends' reality, especially my best friend Diego’s, made me question everything. We were the same age, yet our lives couldn’t have been more different. Why was I born into privilege while others struggle? Why is the Global South still suffering from the consequences of colonialism? It was the first time I truly thought about global inequality. Not as a concept, but as something deeply personal and real.”

“That experience ignited my passion for politics as more than a theory, but as a tool to tackle real, complex problems. Climate change is one of them. It’s not just an environmental issue; it’s a violent crisis. People in the Global South are already dying because of it, while the Global North continues to benefit. Can we really call ourselves ‘nonviolent’ when our comfort is built on systems that harm others? The world’s biggest transformations, such as abolishing slavery and several revolutions, weren’t peaceful. So how do we fight something as big as climate change without acknowledging the structural violence behind it?”