Nachhaltigkeit

We are excited to present the English translation of the Handprint concept ‘Changing structures towards sustainability’. The Handprint is the base of our educational activities at Germanwatch and focuses on the transformative power of political engagement. It helps us gradually transform our society so that everyone can act with sustainability. 

As the decade of implementation gets underway, public development banks need to follow up on their goals and statements of intent with action. The world's fastest growing development bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), plays a critical role in infrastructure investment in Asia, where the bulk of future urban development will take place. The challenges of the mega-trends of urbanization and climate change must be met with consideration for particularly vulnerable populations. To this end, this report provides a method of analysis based on seven principles to strengthen urban transformation in a sustainable and inclusive way.

The energy transition requires a restructuring of the energy system and, as a result of decentralisation, also increasing digitalisation to integrate all actors and make them more flexible. However, digitalisation can be shaped and should happen under ecological and social premises. In this paper we present the challenges and evince possible solutions.

The new EU-Africa Strategy was proposed in March 2020 by the European Commission and the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. The aim is to strengthen cooperation in five key areas.

In our globalized world public policy making and society at large face challenges like climate change and financial crises that are global, shared worldwide and tightly connected with policies across different sectors. Solutions for addressing such highly interconnected challenges in a ‘system of systems’ world, tend to address only subsystems and so fail to achieve systemic change and anticipate impact and unintended consequences of public action. Pursuing the necessity of informing the policy decision process and proactively sensing possible problems concerning global matters we are proposing a novel computational platform called SYMPHONY that offers a solution for designing and testing policies and regulatory measures. Our aim is to offer policy modellers and policy makers tools that will support them to make decisions which will prevent and mitigate economic and financial crises as well as foster an economically and ecologically sustainable growth path.

Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker is one of the pioneers of energy efficiency and eco-taxes in Germany. Founding President of the Wuppertal Institute (1991-2000), he was key in formulating the Energiewende (energy transition) debate in Germany. Previously he was a Professor...