Environmental Policy

The G20 Hamburg Summit in July 2017 will be about nothing less than how globalization should be governed in the future. The G20 countries will have to respond to the key question of our times: How should a globalized world economy be coordinated for the benefit of all humanity against the backdrop of economic uncertainty, higher levels of inequality, climate change, refugees and migration?

We don’t need any “reconciliation of the economy and ecology”. Instead, we should be saying no to destructive and exploitative projects and policies - and yes to a repoliticisation of environmental debate.

At the UN’s COP 22 climate conference in Marrakech, the international community closed ranks despite (or perhaps because of?) the election of Donald Trump as the next U.S. president.

With this open letter, 30 international conservation and environmental leaders demand that “gene drives should not be promoted as conservation tools.” The letter was also signed by Barbara Unmüßig of the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

The gene-drive technology is supposed to enable deliberate extinctions of “pest” species, in order to save “favored” species and stop the global biodiversity loss. The risks are obvious - and the existing regulatory framework is absolutely unsuitable.

Last December in Paris, 196 governments agreed on the need to limit global warming to 1.5°C. But political constraints are causing some to advocate solutions that will do more harm than good.

The Skopje2014 urban reconstruction project is the biggest infrastructure investment in the entire Macedonian history. This video delineates the costs and presents the corruptive machinations behind the project.

The UN climate summit in Marrakech from 7 to 18 November, is the crucial next step for operationalizing the Paris Agreement. Many controversial issues such as damages caused by climate change and financing for the poorest countries are on the agenda.