archive
object(WP_Query)#3630 (55) {
["query"]=>
array(1) {
["tag"]=>
string(17) "annual-conference"
}
["query_vars"]=>
array(66) {
["tag"]=>
string(17) "annual-conference"
["error"]=>
string(0) ""
["m"]=>
string(0) ""
["p"]=>
int(0)
["post_parent"]=>
string(0) ""
["subpost"]=>
string(0) ""
["subpost_id"]=>
string(0) ""
["attachment"]=>
string(0) ""
["attachment_id"]=>
int(0)
["name"]=>
string(0) ""
["pagename"]=>
string(0) ""
["page_id"]=>
int(0)
["second"]=>
string(0) ""
["minute"]=>
string(0) ""
["hour"]=>
string(0) ""
["day"]=>
int(0)
["monthnum"]=>
int(0)
["year"]=>
int(0)
["w"]=>
int(0)
["category_name"]=>
string(0) ""
["cat"]=>
string(0) ""
["tag_id"]=>
int(600)
["author"]=>
string(0) ""
["author_name"]=>
string(0) ""
["feed"]=>
string(0) ""
["tb"]=>
string(0) ""
["paged"]=>
int(0)
["meta_key"]=>
string(0) ""
["meta_value"]=>
string(0) ""
["preview"]=>
string(0) ""
["s"]=>
string(0) ""
["sentence"]=>
string(0) ""
["title"]=>
string(0) ""
["fields"]=>
string(0) ""
["menu_order"]=>
string(0) ""
["embed"]=>
string(0) ""
["category__in"]=>
array(0) {
}
["category__not_in"]=>
array(0) {
}
["category__and"]=>
array(0) {
}
["post__in"]=>
array(0) {
}
["post__not_in"]=>
array(0) {
}
["post_name__in"]=>
array(0) {
}
["tag__in"]=>
array(0) {
}
["tag__not_in"]=>
array(0) {
}
["tag__and"]=>
array(0) {
}
["tag_slug__in"]=>
array(1) {
[0]=>
string(17) "annual-conference"
}
["tag_slug__and"]=>
array(0) {
}
["post_parent__in"]=>
array(0) {
}
["post_parent__not_in"]=>
array(0) {
}
["author__in"]=>
array(0) {
}
["author__not_in"]=>
array(0) {
}
["search_columns"]=>
array(0) {
}
["meta_query"]=>
array(0) {
}
["ignore_sticky_posts"]=>
bool(false)
["suppress_filters"]=>
bool(false)
["cache_results"]=>
bool(true)
["update_post_term_cache"]=>
bool(true)
["update_menu_item_cache"]=>
bool(false)
["lazy_load_term_meta"]=>
bool(true)
["update_post_meta_cache"]=>
bool(true)
["post_type"]=>
string(0) ""
["posts_per_page"]=>
int(12)
["nopaging"]=>
bool(false)
["comments_per_page"]=>
string(2) "50"
["no_found_rows"]=>
bool(false)
["order"]=>
string(4) "DESC"
}
["tax_query"]=>
object(WP_Tax_Query)#6663 (6) {
["queries"]=>
array(1) {
[0]=>
array(5) {
["taxonomy"]=>
string(8) "post_tag"
["terms"]=>
array(1) {
[0]=>
string(17) "annual-conference"
}
["field"]=>
string(4) "slug"
["operator"]=>
string(2) "IN"
["include_children"]=>
bool(true)
}
}
["relation"]=>
string(3) "AND"
["table_aliases":protected]=>
array(1) {
[0]=>
string(21) "wp_term_relationships"
}
["queried_terms"]=>
array(1) {
["post_tag"]=>
array(2) {
["terms"]=>
array(1) {
[0]=>
string(17) "annual-conference"
}
["field"]=>
string(4) "slug"
}
}
["primary_table"]=>
string(8) "wp_posts"
["primary_id_column"]=>
string(2) "ID"
}
["meta_query"]=>
object(WP_Meta_Query)#6678 (9) {
["queries"]=>
array(0) {
}
["relation"]=>
NULL
["meta_table"]=>
NULL
["meta_id_column"]=>
NULL
["primary_table"]=>
NULL
["primary_id_column"]=>
NULL
["table_aliases":protected]=>
array(0) {
}
["clauses":protected]=>
array(0) {
}
["has_or_relation":protected]=>
bool(false)
}
["date_query"]=>
bool(false)
["queried_object"]=>
object(WP_Term)#6631 (12) {
["term_id"]=>
int(600)
["name"]=>
string(17) "annual conference"
["slug"]=>
string(17) "annual-conference"
["term_group"]=>
int(0)
["term_taxonomy_id"]=>
int(600)
["taxonomy"]=>
string(8) "post_tag"
["description"]=>
string(0) ""
["parent"]=>
int(0)
["count"]=>
int(4)
["filter"]=>
string(3) "raw"
["term_order"]=>
string(1) "0"
["custom_order"]=>
string(4) "9999"
}
["queried_object_id"]=>
int(600)
["request"]=>
string(1669) "SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS wp_posts.ID
FROM wp_posts LEFT JOIN wp_term_relationships ON (wp_posts.ID = wp_term_relationships.object_id) JOIN wp_icl_translations wpml_translations
ON wp_posts.ID = wpml_translations.element_id
AND wpml_translations.element_type = CONCAT('post_', wp_posts.post_type)
WHERE 1=1 AND (
wp_term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id IN (600)
) AND ((wp_posts.post_type = 'post' AND (wp_posts.post_status = 'publish' OR wp_posts.post_status = 'acf-disabled'))) AND ( ( ( wpml_translations.language_code = 'en' OR (
wpml_translations.language_code = 'de'
AND wp_posts.post_type IN ( 'event','team' )
AND ( (
( SELECT COUNT(element_id)
FROM wp_icl_translations
WHERE trid = wpml_translations.trid
AND language_code = 'en'
) = 0
) OR (
( SELECT COUNT(element_id)
FROM wp_icl_translations t2
JOIN wp_posts p ON p.id = t2.element_id
WHERE t2.trid = wpml_translations.trid
AND t2.language_code = 'en'
AND (
p.post_status = 'publish' OR p.post_status = 'private' OR
( p.post_type='attachment' AND p.post_status = 'inherit' )
)
) = 0 ) )
) ) AND wp_posts.post_type IN ('post','page','attachment','wp_block','wp_template','wp_template_part','wp_navigation','document','event','member','projects','team' ) ) OR wp_posts.post_type NOT IN ('post','page','attachment','wp_block','wp_template','wp_template_part','wp_navigation','document','event','member','projects','team' ) )
GROUP BY wp_posts.ID
ORDER BY wp_posts.menu_order, wp_posts.post_date DESC
LIMIT 0, 12"
["posts"]=>
&array(3) {
[0]=>
object(WP_Post)#6677 (24) {
["ID"]=>
int(100007)
["post_author"]=>
string(1) "8"
["post_date"]=>
string(19) "2024-10-23 17:23:14"
["post_date_gmt"]=>
string(19) "2024-10-23 15:23:14"
["post_content"]=>
string(8772) "Its raison d’être is to help foster a good life for people around the world: the Pact for the Future, negotiated under co-facilitators Germany and Namibia and adopted by the United Nations in New York in September this year. Its aim is to supercharge the 2030 Agenda, in which the international community already defined 17 goals for sustainable global development back in 2015, among them ending extreme poverty and hunger, achieving gender equality, combatting pandemics, ensuring access to clean water and sanitation for all, and pursuing a sustainable economy.
But there’s a stumbling block: we are currently lacking 4.3 trillion US dollars a year worldwide to fund delivery of the 17 goals. So far, the question of where the money would come from has to all intents and purposes been left unanswered. But that, too, is set to change with the Pact for the Future, including as it does the promise to tackle the issue of financing. The international financial architecture is to be reformed such that countries in the Global South can access loans more easily and the excessive indebtedness of many a nation is contained. If this fails, poorer countries will be unable to cope with the climate crisis, for example, unable to switch to renewable energies.
The pivotal question, therefore, put to the experts at the recent annual conference of the German Council for Sustainable Development (RNE) was: What can we now expect and what specifically needs to be done? The debate was kicked off by the former Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, who is a member of the RNE, remarking: “Given the current conditions, the Summit of the Future provided more orientation than had originally been feared, not least thanks to the good teamwork between European and African countries.”
Education in lieu of debt
Wieczorek-Zeul called above all for African and other countries in the Global South to have a greater voice in the decision-making bodies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Both financial institutions having been founded 80 years ago at a conference in the US nature park Bretton Woods, the developing countries are still underrepresented on their committees to this day. Wieczorek-Zeul also argued for better financing opportunities for indebted states in the Global South – for instance, with a new debt relief initiative and better capitalisation of the regional development banks.
And Wieczorek-Zeul is not alone. The Coalition Agreement of Germany’s current three-party ruling government also states: “Our aim is for a new international consensus on debt management. We support an initiative for a codified international state insolvency procedure that includes all creditors and implements debt relief for groups of countries that are particularly vulnerable.” One potential idea is to cancel their debts if they in return put forward a plan for investing the ensuing funds in, say, their education or healthcare system.
The developing countries must be “released from the financial bottleneck”, echoed Maria João Rodrigues. The former Portuguese labour minister and current president of the European think tank Foundation for European Progressive Studies believes this also requires reform of the international tax system – because the global profit-shifting practised by multinational corporations means the public coffers are missing out on large sums of tax revenue.
Global taxation could make a difference
Already in late 2023, the United Nations passed a resolution on international fiscal cooperation proposed by African states. If this were not implemented, according to recent calculations by the Tax Justice Network, an NGO that advocates for a fair tax system, the world would lose 4.7 trillion US dollars’ worth of tax revenues to tax havens over the next decade. The negotiations are ongoing.
A global tax for billionaires could bring in a further 200 to 250 billion US dollars a year, explained Bodo Ellmers, Director of the Financing for Sustainable Development Program at the Global Policy Forum (GPF) think tank. Within the federal government, SPD Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Svenja Schulze is currently driving the case for just such a tax on the super-rich, criticising the status quo: “An average worker in the EU pays 35 percent income tax, but the billionaires of this world effectively contribute less than one percent tax to the common good.” We’re still short of funds, too short, she said, and made way for three examples.
“We need enormous financial resources”, declared Arjun Kumar Bhattarai, President of the Nepal Development Initiative, an NGO based in Kathmandu. And they need to be assured long-term. In the Asian country, some 17 percent of the population live in poverty, with almost a third of children under five suffering from developmental delays brought on by malnourishment. Healthcare has long been inadequate. At the same time, Nepal is ranked the fourth most vulnerable country to the impacts of climate change; and 66 percent of the Nepalese workforce work in agriculture, which of course is dependent on the weather.
Prospects for young people
Kenya, too, is in urgent need of funds. The Global Sovereign Debt Monitor 2024 clearly shows that in 2024 a quarter of the country’s budget was spent just on interest and loan repayments to foreign creditors. Closing the financial gaps would also be in Germany’s own interests, pointed out Florence Syevuo, Executive Director of the SDGs Kenya Forum, which brings together 350+ diverse civil society organisations: “We must create prospects for young people.”
In many African countries they have no jobs, despite being qualified and full of energy. So they head off to Germany. “Why should they have to cross the ocean? That ends up costing Germany a lot of money. Why not invest it in Kenya instead?”, asked Syevuo. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), youth unemployment in Kenya stands at 27 percent, but the Federation of Kenya Employers puts it as high as 67 percent.
A final example comes from South America, Ecuador to be precise: August 2023 saw a majority of the country’s population vote to stop oil production in Yasuní National Park. Gabriela Suárez Buitrón, director of FARO Ecuador, Foundation for the Advance of Reforms and Opportunities, said: “If a decision like that is recognised by the world, then the world must support it.”
Fidelis Stehle, UN Youth Delegate for Sustainable Development, underlined how crucial it is to change course. The efforts made thus far are simply not enough. “What we need is something different”, he insisted, referencing the climate researcher Johan Rockström. Rockström developed the concept of planetary boundaries, six out of nine of which are already deemed to have been crossed – making it all the more critical to free up sizeable resources.
Whether this would succeed, whether we would see any green shoots emerging, wondered RNE member Wieczorek-Zeul, could already become apparent at the autumn meetings of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington DC, currently underway at the end of October, and at the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in summer 2025 in Spain."
["post_title"]=>
string(57) "The UN Pact for the Future: New hope for multilateralism?"
["post_excerpt"]=>
string(285) "Debt relief for poor countries, pulling the plug on corporate tax avoidance, guaranteeing developing countries a seat on international finance committees – experts discuss proposals for development financing at the annual conference of the German Council for Sustainable Development."
["post_status"]=>
string(7) "publish"
["comment_status"]=>
string(6) "closed"
["ping_status"]=>
string(6) "closed"
["post_password"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_name"]=>
string(55) "the-un-pact-for-the-future-new-hope-for-multilateralism"
["to_ping"]=>
string(0) ""
["pinged"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_modified"]=>
string(19) "2024-10-30 17:25:52"
["post_modified_gmt"]=>
string(19) "2024-10-30 16:25:52"
["post_content_filtered"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_parent"]=>
int(0)
["guid"]=>
string(43) "https://www.nachhaltigkeitsrat.de/?p=100007"
["menu_order"]=>
int(0)
["post_type"]=>
string(4) "post"
["post_mime_type"]=>
string(0) ""
["comment_count"]=>
string(1) "0"
["filter"]=>
string(3) "raw"
}
[1]=>
object(WP_Post)#6630 (24) {
["ID"]=>
int(95117)
["post_author"]=>
string(2) "10"
["post_date"]=>
string(19) "2022-11-30 13:53:44"
["post_date_gmt"]=>
string(19) "2022-11-30 12:53:44"
["post_content"]=>
string(6404) "Transformation by design or by disaster? We still have the choice of which path to take, but the window of opportunity is shrinking as we speak. That was Ulla Burchardt’s urgent appeal for a rethink as the politician and member of the German Council for Sustainable Development (RNE) opened the topic forum “Fostering Innovations for Sustainability! Socially. Technologically. Institutionally.” at the RNE Annual Conference with her keynote speech. Whether and how innovation succeeds is the key to the sustainability transition – but also to the success of the Joint Action for Sustainable Development, the joint federal and Länder initiative officially launched just a few hours prior at the same event.
“When we call for innovation and transformation to be turbo-charged, it’s nothing to do with ethics or fashion. It’s about acting in such a way as to avoid economic and social upheaval, which are inevitable consequences of the further destruction of our natural basis of existence”, said Burchardt in her introduction, in which she also gave a brief insight into the latest RNE statement on the subject of innovation policy.
Stop fixating on technology
The RNE has already been warning “for some time” that the efforts being made are not sufficient to achieve the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and tackle multiple crises to boot. The key message, continued Burchardt, was therefore that “Innovation policy needs a new direction”. She called for a holistic understanding of innovation, away from the fixation on technology that is still the touchstone in the masterminding departments: “We need system innovations and other practices in our dealings with resources and people, new habits and different patterns of consumption. Social, cultural and institutional innovations must be accorded the same value as technical ones.” And crucially, all stakeholders must be included and involved. Because whenever something new comes along, something old also has to disappear. But no one should fall by the wayside.
The RNE is therefore advocating a holistic and cross-ministerial innovation strategy, which comes under the Federal Chancellery and is based around the United Nations’ 17 SDGs. “It took six years to develop the hydrogen strategy. That’s how long the departments took to agree on the details”, Burchardt reported. Given that time is running out, this should flag up that “We also need innovation in our administration, namely to speed up decisions with a new culture of cooperation”, she said.
The affair of the chip fork
Nora Griefahn, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the NGO Cradle to Cradle, called out the fact that all too often actors focus on “doing less damage”, for instance by producing fewer emissions. “But goals like that do not lead us into an innovative future”, she said. “Why don’t we start by setting ourselves different goals, by asking ourselves how we can have a positive impact?” At the same time we need a holistic understanding of innovation. One example is that currently everyone is focusing only on the energy question, with the result that “We’re building houses with materials that are not innovative and we’re creating a massive waste problem for ourselves”.
Griefahn’s own work shines a light on perspectives that can be ideally scaled up. Often she finds herself up against political barriers. In the summer, for example, Cradle to Cradle helped to organise three concerts as part of the “Labor Tempelhof”, featuring the bands Die Ärzte and Die Toten Hosen on the Tempelhofer Feld in Berlin. The goal was to make these large-scale events not only climate-neutral but in fact climate-positive. Not everything worked out: a chip fork made of biodegradable plastic, for example, never made it to production. Due to the ban on single-use plastic – whether biodegradable or not – they couldn’t find a single machine in the whole of Europe that could have been used to make the forks. A further problem was that “For a project like that, you only get funding if you can say that you’ve done five years of research on it first”, criticised the NGO representative. But that’s no way to get it off the ground. Here too, she had another example: “The Joint Action was agreed in 2019, and now three years later it’s only getting started”, she said. “We need far too long.”
Promoting regional innovation ecosystems
Kai Gehring, chairman of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment of the German Bundestag, explained that policymakers need to set firmer goals in the transition process and work towards their achievement with incentives and, if necessary, sanctions. That said, such political control must not be imposed top-down, but can only succeed in conjunction with civil society and science. It is essential to create regional innovation ecosystems. The sustainability community, the pioneers of change in the scientific community, Fridays for Future, Scientists for Future and many more can “link arms for the common goals”.
What will it take for people to commit to innovation and transformation, asked moderator Tanja Ferkau in her wrap-up, also with regard to the Joint Action for Sustainable Development. It is important to shed more light on the positive examples – a climate-neutral university campus, say, or a resource-positive concert – so that they can be emulated, the round-table agreed. Over a long period, people had thought about the transfer between science and business, pointed out Green Bundestag member Gehring, but at the same time had neglected society. But only with broad-based expansion of best practices can there be a change in culture. It was also clear that policymakers must create other framework conditions and space for experiments. Ulla Burchardt appealed to the voters to step up their demands for such a change from their politicians. After all, “It is also a question of supply and demand”."
["post_title"]=>
string(56) "Turbo-boost needed to deliver sustainability innovations"
["post_excerpt"]=>
string(232) "How do we get the ball rolling? A forum at the RNE Annual Conference discussed holistic innovation strategies for sustainability and their chances of being implemented. Plus, how policy needs to change for the transition to succeed."
["post_status"]=>
string(7) "publish"
["comment_status"]=>
string(6) "closed"
["ping_status"]=>
string(6) "closed"
["post_password"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_name"]=>
string(56) "turbo-boost-needed-to-deliver-sustainability-innovations"
["to_ping"]=>
string(0) ""
["pinged"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_modified"]=>
string(19) "2022-12-09 13:54:09"
["post_modified_gmt"]=>
string(19) "2022-12-09 12:54:09"
["post_content_filtered"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_parent"]=>
int(0)
["guid"]=>
string(42) "https://www.nachhaltigkeitsrat.de/?p=95117"
["menu_order"]=>
int(0)
["post_type"]=>
string(4) "post"
["post_mime_type"]=>
string(0) ""
["comment_count"]=>
string(1) "0"
["filter"]=>
string(3) "raw"
}
[2]=>
object(WP_Post)#6528 (24) {
["ID"]=>
int(94411)
["post_author"]=>
string(2) "10"
["post_date"]=>
string(19) "2022-11-04 11:46:03"
["post_date_gmt"]=>
string(19) "2022-11-04 10:46:03"
["post_content"]=>
string(8139) "A true transition needs “a good story”, said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber at the 21st Annual Conference of the German Council for Sustainable Development (RNE) in Berlin. One of the most internationally renowned climate scientists, Schellnhuber founded the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), where he has been Director Emeritus since 2018.
“The biggest elephant in the climate room is building”, he explained, having joined forces with other experts to set up Bauhaus Earth to change this. Some 40 percent of greenhouse gases emitted globally originate from the construction and operation of buildings and infrastructure. And not only that: half of all waste produced in western industrialised countries comes from building and demolition. In Germany alone, some 45 hectares a day of near-natural landscape is lost to housing developments and transport infrastructure. And yet this giant among climate sins went for a long time unrecognised.
“We should have changed direction long ago”, said Schellnhuber. In 2019 the Greenland ice sheet lost a record amount of mass, with one million tonnes of ice melting every minute. Humanity rushed towards the planks laid down by the Paris Agreement in 2015. But the average temperature of the Earth’s surface is already 1.25 degrees above its pre-industrial level. “We are heading towards 3, 4, 5 degrees”, warned the climate scientist. “That would be a different world, one in which civilisation could not survive.” Global warming, he continued, “must be halted not much above two degrees – and then we have to work backwards”.
Now more than ever
But aren’t there other priorities for now? The climate crisis is not the only crisis to contend with. 2019 introduced us to coronavirus and on 24 February this year came Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine on top. People are worried about heating their homes, putting food on the table and how they will get to work. Germany is facing existential problems – as is the rest of the world. But that’s no reason to put the socioecological restructuring on hold. Quite the contrary. The participants, including many members of the government, were agreed. It’s worth following the debate. It reveals a lot about how seriously sustainability should be taken in the crisis and which partners can help drive it at home and abroad.
“Now more than ever”, explained Sarah Ryglewski, who as Minister of State in the Federal Chancellery is responsible for Federal-State relations and sustainability policy. She had stepped in at short notice to replace Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who was due to attend the conference as keynote speaker but had come down with Covid. “We all realise how dependent we are on fossil fuels”, said Ryglewski. At the same time the ecological crises are escalating: devastating floods in Pakistan, drought in the Horn of Africa, not to mention the many forest fires in Europe. Germany, she continued, wants to be the first major industrialised nation to reach climate neutrality by 2045. The target share of renewable energies making up gross electricity consumption is at least 80 percent by 2030, which is why infrastructure planning and approvals are now also being fast-tracked. And the federal administration itself plans to be climate-neutral by 2030. Far from being an obstacle, the transition to sustainability is an economic opportunity. “If we miss it, we’ll be left behind”, insisted the Minister of State. And Germany won’t swerve its international obligations either.
Bonfire of enthusiasm for sustainability
Rebuilding Germany and the world sustainably – that’s what many people want. Of course there are also voices that say “Crisis management first – transition, change, climate neutrality later”. We need to “meet them head-on”, said RNE Chairman Werner Schnappauf, and instead ignite “a bonfire of enthusiasm throughout the country”. Schnappauf called on people to start “sustainability projects everywhere: we now need the innovative capacity of business and a new cooperation between society, politics and the economy”. This is the duty of each and every one of us.
For this very reason, Minister of State Sarah Ryglewski and Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia and current Chair of the Conference of Minister-Presidents Hendrik Wüst launched the Joint Action for Sustainable Development at the annual conference. With the motto “All together now”, the joint federal and Länder initiative is coordinated by the RNE. Organisations can sign up on an online platform and register their sustainability activities and points of contact. The aim, explained Lisi Maier, RNE member and Director of the Federal Foundation for Gender Equality, is to bring together actors who have not worked together before and gather ideas.
Wood instead of concrete
This is where, for example, the idea of climate scientist Schellnhuber comes in, which gives us a perspective to focus on in uncertain times. Like the Bauhaus movement of the 20th century, he wants to transform our built-up environment sustainably. So far, it’s “dysfunctionally ugly”, he says: “We are building in the wrong way, where the human spirit cannot feel at ease”. His alternative model is to “Reforest the planet, retimber the city”. Woodland around the world is being reforested to suit the climate; likewise, architecture is changing over from reinforced concrete and brick to organic materials. Schellnhuber refers to the system of a “forest-building pump”, which can even lower the CO2 content of the atmosphere, because trees absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide as they grow.
Politics is starting to get to grips with this. In 2020, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, launched the New European Bauhaus initiative, an idea being further developed by Ruth Reichstein in the Commission’s internal think tank I.D.E.A. Many voices are calling for “technological neutrality, treating everything as of equal value”, but that hasn’t been applied to wood and clay for a long time, she pointed out at the annual conference. Concrete has been the material of choice up to now. According to Cansel Kiziltepe, Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building, her department is currently working on a timber construction strategy together with the Ministry of Agriculture.
The building transition will not be a walk in the park. There is “enormous demand for affordable housing”, said Martin Horn, mayor of the city of Freiburg im Breisgau. And local governments with ambitious plans for socioecological building need support in the form of federal and state funding. Theresa Keilhacker, president of the Chamber of Architects Berlin, sees great potential in maintaining existing buildings. This had “been lost sight of in recent years”. Only recently, the Association of German Architects wrote an open letter (in German) to federal building minister Klara Geywitz demanding a moratorium on demolition.
In the Global North the ecological renovation of old buildings should take centre stage, along with the addition of storeys, urged Schellnhuber. In the Global South, however, with its fast-growing population, new housing needs to be built. How to build more sustainably – this question needs to be given priority in the coming months, not least through the Joint Action for Sustainable Development. Schellnhuber promised: “We are on the threshold of a new architectural era, where we will build sustainably, for all – and we will do it in style.”"
["post_title"]=>
string(53) "Building a sustainable Germany – now more than ever"
["post_excerpt"]=>
string(284) "In times of war, pandemic, inflation and energy shortages, humanity needs sustainability more than ever. This was the key takeaway from the 21st Annual Conference of the German Council for Sustainable Development, where one of the topics in focus was sustainable building and housing."
["post_status"]=>
string(7) "publish"
["comment_status"]=>
string(6) "closed"
["ping_status"]=>
string(6) "closed"
["post_password"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_name"]=>
string(49) "building-a-sustainable-germany-now-more-than-ever"
["to_ping"]=>
string(0) ""
["pinged"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_modified"]=>
string(19) "2022-11-04 11:46:43"
["post_modified_gmt"]=>
string(19) "2022-11-04 10:46:43"
["post_content_filtered"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_parent"]=>
int(0)
["guid"]=>
string(42) "https://www.nachhaltigkeitsrat.de/?p=94411"
["menu_order"]=>
int(0)
["post_type"]=>
string(4) "post"
["post_mime_type"]=>
string(0) ""
["comment_count"]=>
string(1) "0"
["filter"]=>
string(3) "raw"
}
}
["post_count"]=>
int(3)
["current_post"]=>
int(-1)
["before_loop"]=>
bool(true)
["in_the_loop"]=>
bool(false)
["post"]=>
object(WP_Post)#6677 (24) {
["ID"]=>
int(100007)
["post_author"]=>
string(1) "8"
["post_date"]=>
string(19) "2024-10-23 17:23:14"
["post_date_gmt"]=>
string(19) "2024-10-23 15:23:14"
["post_content"]=>
string(8772) "Its raison d’être is to help foster a good life for people around the world: the Pact for the Future, negotiated under co-facilitators Germany and Namibia and adopted by the United Nations in New York in September this year. Its aim is to supercharge the 2030 Agenda, in which the international community already defined 17 goals for sustainable global development back in 2015, among them ending extreme poverty and hunger, achieving gender equality, combatting pandemics, ensuring access to clean water and sanitation for all, and pursuing a sustainable economy.
But there’s a stumbling block: we are currently lacking 4.3 trillion US dollars a year worldwide to fund delivery of the 17 goals. So far, the question of where the money would come from has to all intents and purposes been left unanswered. But that, too, is set to change with the Pact for the Future, including as it does the promise to tackle the issue of financing. The international financial architecture is to be reformed such that countries in the Global South can access loans more easily and the excessive indebtedness of many a nation is contained. If this fails, poorer countries will be unable to cope with the climate crisis, for example, unable to switch to renewable energies.
The pivotal question, therefore, put to the experts at the recent annual conference of the German Council for Sustainable Development (RNE) was: What can we now expect and what specifically needs to be done? The debate was kicked off by the former Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, who is a member of the RNE, remarking: “Given the current conditions, the Summit of the Future provided more orientation than had originally been feared, not least thanks to the good teamwork between European and African countries.”
Education in lieu of debt
Wieczorek-Zeul called above all for African and other countries in the Global South to have a greater voice in the decision-making bodies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Both financial institutions having been founded 80 years ago at a conference in the US nature park Bretton Woods, the developing countries are still underrepresented on their committees to this day. Wieczorek-Zeul also argued for better financing opportunities for indebted states in the Global South – for instance, with a new debt relief initiative and better capitalisation of the regional development banks.
And Wieczorek-Zeul is not alone. The Coalition Agreement of Germany’s current three-party ruling government also states: “Our aim is for a new international consensus on debt management. We support an initiative for a codified international state insolvency procedure that includes all creditors and implements debt relief for groups of countries that are particularly vulnerable.” One potential idea is to cancel their debts if they in return put forward a plan for investing the ensuing funds in, say, their education or healthcare system.
The developing countries must be “released from the financial bottleneck”, echoed Maria João Rodrigues. The former Portuguese labour minister and current president of the European think tank Foundation for European Progressive Studies believes this also requires reform of the international tax system – because the global profit-shifting practised by multinational corporations means the public coffers are missing out on large sums of tax revenue.
Global taxation could make a difference
Already in late 2023, the United Nations passed a resolution on international fiscal cooperation proposed by African states. If this were not implemented, according to recent calculations by the Tax Justice Network, an NGO that advocates for a fair tax system, the world would lose 4.7 trillion US dollars’ worth of tax revenues to tax havens over the next decade. The negotiations are ongoing.
A global tax for billionaires could bring in a further 200 to 250 billion US dollars a year, explained Bodo Ellmers, Director of the Financing for Sustainable Development Program at the Global Policy Forum (GPF) think tank. Within the federal government, SPD Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Svenja Schulze is currently driving the case for just such a tax on the super-rich, criticising the status quo: “An average worker in the EU pays 35 percent income tax, but the billionaires of this world effectively contribute less than one percent tax to the common good.” We’re still short of funds, too short, she said, and made way for three examples.
“We need enormous financial resources”, declared Arjun Kumar Bhattarai, President of the Nepal Development Initiative, an NGO based in Kathmandu. And they need to be assured long-term. In the Asian country, some 17 percent of the population live in poverty, with almost a third of children under five suffering from developmental delays brought on by malnourishment. Healthcare has long been inadequate. At the same time, Nepal is ranked the fourth most vulnerable country to the impacts of climate change; and 66 percent of the Nepalese workforce work in agriculture, which of course is dependent on the weather.
Prospects for young people
Kenya, too, is in urgent need of funds. The Global Sovereign Debt Monitor 2024 clearly shows that in 2024 a quarter of the country’s budget was spent just on interest and loan repayments to foreign creditors. Closing the financial gaps would also be in Germany’s own interests, pointed out Florence Syevuo, Executive Director of the SDGs Kenya Forum, which brings together 350+ diverse civil society organisations: “We must create prospects for young people.”
In many African countries they have no jobs, despite being qualified and full of energy. So they head off to Germany. “Why should they have to cross the ocean? That ends up costing Germany a lot of money. Why not invest it in Kenya instead?”, asked Syevuo. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), youth unemployment in Kenya stands at 27 percent, but the Federation of Kenya Employers puts it as high as 67 percent.
A final example comes from South America, Ecuador to be precise: August 2023 saw a majority of the country’s population vote to stop oil production in Yasuní National Park. Gabriela Suárez Buitrón, director of FARO Ecuador, Foundation for the Advance of Reforms and Opportunities, said: “If a decision like that is recognised by the world, then the world must support it.”
Fidelis Stehle, UN Youth Delegate for Sustainable Development, underlined how crucial it is to change course. The efforts made thus far are simply not enough. “What we need is something different”, he insisted, referencing the climate researcher Johan Rockström. Rockström developed the concept of planetary boundaries, six out of nine of which are already deemed to have been crossed – making it all the more critical to free up sizeable resources.
Whether this would succeed, whether we would see any green shoots emerging, wondered RNE member Wieczorek-Zeul, could already become apparent at the autumn meetings of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington DC, currently underway at the end of October, and at the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in summer 2025 in Spain."
["post_title"]=>
string(57) "The UN Pact for the Future: New hope for multilateralism?"
["post_excerpt"]=>
string(285) "Debt relief for poor countries, pulling the plug on corporate tax avoidance, guaranteeing developing countries a seat on international finance committees – experts discuss proposals for development financing at the annual conference of the German Council for Sustainable Development."
["post_status"]=>
string(7) "publish"
["comment_status"]=>
string(6) "closed"
["ping_status"]=>
string(6) "closed"
["post_password"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_name"]=>
string(55) "the-un-pact-for-the-future-new-hope-for-multilateralism"
["to_ping"]=>
string(0) ""
["pinged"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_modified"]=>
string(19) "2024-10-30 17:25:52"
["post_modified_gmt"]=>
string(19) "2024-10-30 16:25:52"
["post_content_filtered"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_parent"]=>
int(0)
["guid"]=>
string(43) "https://www.nachhaltigkeitsrat.de/?p=100007"
["menu_order"]=>
int(0)
["post_type"]=>
string(4) "post"
["post_mime_type"]=>
string(0) ""
["comment_count"]=>
string(1) "0"
["filter"]=>
string(3) "raw"
}
["comment_count"]=>
int(0)
["current_comment"]=>
int(-1)
["found_posts"]=>
int(3)
["max_num_pages"]=>
int(1)
["max_num_comment_pages"]=>
int(0)
["is_single"]=>
bool(false)
["is_preview"]=>
bool(false)
["is_page"]=>
bool(false)
["is_archive"]=>
bool(true)
["is_date"]=>
bool(false)
["is_year"]=>
bool(false)
["is_month"]=>
bool(false)
["is_day"]=>
bool(false)
["is_time"]=>
bool(false)
["is_author"]=>
bool(false)
["is_category"]=>
bool(false)
["is_tag"]=>
bool(true)
["is_tax"]=>
bool(false)
["is_search"]=>
bool(false)
["is_feed"]=>
bool(false)
["is_comment_feed"]=>
bool(false)
["is_trackback"]=>
bool(false)
["is_home"]=>
bool(false)
["is_privacy_policy"]=>
bool(false)
["is_404"]=>
bool(false)
["is_embed"]=>
bool(false)
["is_paged"]=>
bool(false)
["is_admin"]=>
bool(false)
["is_attachment"]=>
bool(false)
["is_singular"]=>
bool(false)
["is_robots"]=>
bool(false)
["is_favicon"]=>
bool(false)
["is_posts_page"]=>
bool(false)
["is_post_type_archive"]=>
bool(false)
["query_vars_hash":"WP_Query":private]=>
string(32) "00310325886c6396224eda6c7247e864"
["query_vars_changed":"WP_Query":private]=>
bool(true)
["thumbnails_cached"]=>
bool(false)
["allow_query_attachment_by_filename":protected]=>
bool(false)
["stopwords":"WP_Query":private]=>
NULL
["compat_fields":"WP_Query":private]=>
array(2) {
[0]=>
string(15) "query_vars_hash"
[1]=>
string(18) "query_vars_changed"
}
["compat_methods":"WP_Query":private]=>
array(2) {
[0]=>
string(16) "init_query_flags"
[1]=>
string(15) "parse_tax_query"
}
}