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The Annual Reports of the Heinrich Böll Foundation provide a comprehensive insight into our work in Germany and around the globe. They are available online and since 2011 in a printed version. The 2012 report focusses on our involvement in subjects such as sustainability, energy policy and the euro crisis.

Over the past few years there has been an evolving discourse over the intersection of immigration, integration, and culture in both Europe and the United States. In this new report, Spencer Boyer and Victoria Pardini offer several ideas the United States and Germany can learn from each other’s political and policy approaches 

In this issue, our authors report on conflicts stemming from coal and copper mining in Afghanistan, India, and Myanmar. The articles on Cambodia and on Inner Mongolia in China illustrate how the traditional economic models and ways of life of indigenous populations suffer from the unrestrained exploitation of raw materials.

This paper is confrontational and challenges many deep assumptions in mainstream development. It argues that from the early 1990s in many ways Cambodia became a ‘donor playground’. It supports this argument by reference to various arguments in development studies, to a specific case study of intervention in Cambodia, and to an examination of important parts of the relevant donor ‘knowledge production’.

This study aims to provide a brief overview of bauxite mining in three key locations in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. It takes a deeper look into the role that China is playing in investing in bauxite mining and regional infrastructure to strategically position the country as the main market for bauxite, alumina and aluminum from these three countries.

Transnational organized crime  is an inherent feature of economic globalization, and there are networks operating in both legal and illegal sectors. This publication gives a cross cultural and multi-disciplinary analysis of transnational organized crime including a historical approach from different regional and cultural contexts.

Mineral fertilizers have never been used as much as they are today, and in developing countries they are experiencing a renaissance. But the efficacy of mineral fertilizers and the problems they entail have long been a matter of contention. This study provides an overview of the economic and ecological potential as well as the limitations and negative impacts of mineral fertilizers in the tropics and subtropics.

Africa is the world’s youngest continent, with people under the age of 35 constituting about 65 percent of the population. This edition of Perspectives sheds light on youth politics and youth in politics in the continent and asks: Are the youth a political force?

The Wealth of the Commons is about history, political change, public policy and cultural transformation on a global scale – but most of all, it’s about commoners taking charge of their lives and their endangered resources. It’s about common people doing uncommon things.

The April issue of our Turkish "Perspectives" magazine portrays the environmental movement in Turkey and takes a closer look at its agenda, its protagonists, its biggest achievements and its relationship to the political sphere. Furthermore, it provides articles on the fields of democracy, culture, ecology and foreign policy.

Publication Series on Ecology 31: A profound flaw of our civilisation, with its multiple crises, could lie in the fact that we deny the world’s deeply creative, poetic and expressive processes, all of them constantly unfolding and bringing forth a multitude of dynamic, interacting relationships. We might have forgotten what it means to be alive.

A rich collection of articles on hot political issues, democracy as well as the political system, the environment, ecology, the arts and many other subjects. The highlight in this second issue will be on “The Turkish Question” with perspectives by Doğu Ergil, Ahmet İnsel, Evren Balta Paker, Mustafa Sönmez, and İnci Özkan Kerestecioğlu.

The EU debt crisis has clearly shown that the monetary union cannot be upheld without coordinated fiscal and economic policies. But many citizens are under the impression that their voices, and those of their national parliaments, are being sidelined in favour of ever-greater centralisation – and that, in the process, democracy is being eroded.

Publication Series on Democracy 31: The present study by Andrea Fleschenberg shows that in national and international debates about the transition process in Afghanistan women’s voices are seldom present, or taken into consideration.

Big transnational corporations do what they can to stick to and increase their power in the natural resources sector and promote that as “Green Growth”. How can civil society react to that? In their paper Nancy Alexander and Lili Fuhr analyse the state of the development and formulate questions for a debate. 

Gender-Responsive Multilateral Adaptation Investments in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region  - Multilateral institutions must establish and implement gender safeguard policies consistent with existing international conventions and instruments on gender equality in all adaptation projects.

The concept of ‘green growth’ rests on the idea of an ‘efficiency revolution’ – climate-friendly technologies, sustainable industrial and transport sectors, and an efficient use of resources. But while vast productivity increases do indeed incentivize a more efficient use of energy, they raise demand at the same time. This paper explores the range of possible rebound effects, their quantitative extent and the difficulties encountered by political efforts to contain them.

Despite the tens of millions of dollars in aid and concessional loans being spent in Cambodia, the evidence shows that tenure insecurity, forced evictions and large-scale land grabbing are escalating to alarminglevels. The paper calls on development partners to adopt a ten-pronged framework for a human rights approach to development.