In the past, we tended to see cities as dirty, unnatural, and isolating places; today, citizens and urban planners alike are starting to see their potential for generating widespread well-being at low financial and environmental cost. People want the streets to make room for pedestrians and bicyclists, and for civic engagement and for sharing. 

There is an all-enclosing commons-economy which has been successful for billions of years: The biosphere is neither efficient nor does it know property. Nature embodies the commons paradigm par excellence and can therefore provide us with a powerful methodology of the commons as a natural and social ecology.

Clearly possession is no more sufficient today than it was for the English villagers of the 17th and 18th centuries of enclosure. Only legal recognition of commons as the communal property of communities, author Liz Alden Wily finds, is sufficient to afford real protection.

The Lebanese author and leftist activist Fawwaz Traboulsi has followed the the Arab revolutions as a writer and analyst, writing down his insights 2012 in his book „Democracy is Revolution“. Mohammad al-Attar met him for the interview about Syria in Beirut.

With the constitutional amendments adopted on the 11th of March, Viktor Orbán has once again caused a surprise. The reactions of the Western European public show that there is still an inadequate grasp of how political power is exercised by Orbán’s government. European democrats now finally need to formulate a common position against the power centralization in the country.

Shale gas is promoted as a safe and clean energy source that can help Europe increase its energy security and provide an affordable transition to a low carbon economy. The US experience, however, has shown what serious environmental and human health concerns are related to fracking. This report examines the uncertainties of shale gas and calls for an EU-wide moratorium.

After 20 years in Lahore, we are opening a new chapter of our work here in the capital and we are glad to have all of you with us. The motto of this evening, as you can see on the banner here behind me, is “The journey continues”. It’s a very appropriate motto because it shows that the Heinrich Böll Foundation is – like Pakistan – on the move without forgetting its roots.  

In 2012 the head office Berlin decided to shift the Lahore office to Islamabad because of the shift in its worldwide policy to move the HBS offices to the capital cities in order to be close to the political arena. Therefore we had an official opening in Islamabad on the 6th of February 2013.