News
Empowerment for Climate Leadership - Newsleter (03)

In only two weeks we will all meet again in Arusha. We hope you are feeling pleasant anticipation towards our next and final reunion. We also hope that you are full of curiosity about the program we compiled for you with the help of your good ideas, helpful comments and attentive questions. May this newsletter give you some insights on what happened so far in and around our offices and the ECL-project team. Perhaps it also helps you a little bit to shorten the waiting period. Thanks to Sixbert for the excellent preparation meeting at "Alter Zoll" bier garden!

News
Empowerment for Climate Leadership - Newsleter (02)

Hope you are doing well! Only a bit more than 50 days to the next exchange meeting! Looking forward seeing you all in Arusha!
We hope you all make headway with the deliverables of the last modules or finished them already. If any problem occurs you can contact us any time and we find a solution together. Feedback for your deliverables from our side will be given in the upcoming weeks as soon as possible.

Publication
Cover: Open letter Ecodesign
Open Letter to Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission
Coolproducts, a coalition of environmental NGOs, with the support of over 30 stakeholders across Europe and beyond (including Germanwatch), urge Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, to regulate smartphones by 2021 with requirements that will make smartphones more energy efficient and more durable, repairable and recyclable.
News
Second stage of exchange program is initiated
The project „Empowerment for Climate Leadership“ (ECL) is an extra-occupational 18-months-lasting platform of exchange and training, organized by Climate Action Network (CAN) Tanzania and Germanwatch. ECL supports 20 enthusiastic, climate-active young people, aged 20 to 30 years, who are professionally or voluntarily committed in civil society. Now, the second stage of the ECL-project is initiated
Blogpost
Blogpost
Blog post by Dr. Jim Taylor (WESSA) and Dr. Mark Graham (GroundTruth), March 2017
Dr. Jim Taylor, director of environmental education for the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa (WESSA) and & Dr. Mark Graham, director of GroundTruth, report about the consequences of the extreme drought in Cape Town (South Africa) and what kind of positive learn effects this water crisis has - besides the negative impacts.
Blogpost
Blogpost
Blog post by Kartikeya Sarabhai & Madhavi Joshi (Center for Environment Education (CEE) in Ahmedabad, India), March 2018
India faces major environmental challenges with respect to the stress on its natural resources such as biodiversity and water and increased air, water and land pollution. All of these provide major challenges but also opportunities for development considering the path that India would choose to take. The development that is currently seen in the West with its high ecological and carbon footprint is not sustainable. Therefore, the developing countries simultaneously need rapid development, high population, increased aspirations and the need to protect the environment. We need to do this in ways which leapfrog the country to a more sustainable level of development than is visible in any of the models of developed countries today.
Publication
Cover: Climate Litigation and Loss&Damage
Loss and damage (L&D) due to climate change impacts is already a reality for many people, especially the most vulnerable. So far, there is no prospect of sufficient financial support for dealing with actual L&D within the climate regime (UNFCCC). Where international climate diplomacy doesn’t advance, affected people start to take the legal avenue to address the problem of L&D. Based on this assessment, this paper analyses the status quo of international climate change litigation, revealing how the current court cases are turning an abstract risk of climate claims into a concrete one.
Publication
Cover: Sustainable lifestyles in Germany and India
- First draft of a living document -
The role sustainable lifestyles can play in achieving a paradigm shift towards sustainability is acknowledged in both the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement of 2015. They are essential complements to technology and policy solutions, which alone cannot bring the necessary changes. Sustainable lifestyles are emerging in entirely different socio-economic and cultural circumstances in India and Germany. This paper contains first findings from a joint project on sustainable lifestyles conducted by Germanwatch and Climate Action Network South Asia (CANSA) India.
News
GCF CSO Readiness Project at SB46

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) has the ambition to become the most important multilateral instrument in climate finance. Africa has become a focus region for the GCF early on. As it is unlikely that the intended paradigm shift towards low-carbon emissions and climate-resilient economies and societies (GCF founding mandate) can be achieved without broad civil society (CS) engagement, it is essential to scale-up existing civil society capacities to advocate for ambitious proposals, bring on-the-ground expertise to the table, help embed GCF-funded activities in a broader societal support for transformation and increase accountability of national authorities.

Blogpost
Blogpost
Blog post by David Eckstein, February 2018
The Green Climate Fund has made significant progress in terms of supporting low-carbon and climate resilient development in developing countries. Yet the Fund still has to work on some of the gaps and challenges that have manifested throughout the first phase of operationalization. An overview of the key tasks for 2018.