Hauff calls for robust sustainability strategy

Progress expected from tomorrow's Bundestag debate

Berlin, 11 February 2009 The chairman of the German Council for Sustainable Development, Volker Hauff, expects the German parliament, the Bundestag, to pass clear resolutions on a sustainable economic system. In the run-up to Thursday's parliamentary debate on Germany's national sustainability strategy, the Council Chairman and former German Minister for Research and Technology is urging the members of parliament to engage in a decisive and target-oriented debate: "We now need to make significant progress in restructuring our economic system to make it viable for the future. The current financial and economic crisis shows in a deeply disconcerting manner how far away we have moved from this objective. This crisis arose primarily due to a shortsighted, non-sustainable understanding of how to run the economy," says Hauff.

The parliamentary debate on Thursday is, in Hauff's opinion, an important opportunity to press ahead at the highest level with the discourse on a restructuring of the economic and political system that would make provisions for the future and meet the needs of future generations. Hauff, who was a member of parliament himself for many years until 1989, called on the parliamentarians to take bold initiatives and ensure that Germany's sustainability policy can weather future crises. According to Hauff, Germany now needs to take the positive approaches to energy and raw materials policies, which are part of the national sustainability strategy, and implement these in a way that is both effective and mandatory.

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