Twenty years on from the Kosovo War, the collective memory of both parties in the conflict remains burdened by myths and incontestable truths about what actually took place. In this issue of Perspectives we aim to highlight the fact that Kosovo is not just a toponym, but a country burdened by its recent violent history, where common people are struggling to rebuild the broken societies that the conflict has left behind.

The EU fails anew to defend European values in the Balkans. Raging destructing ideologies, which have forged ahead during the 1990ies, now bounce back into the EU and endanger the cohesion inside the Union and its very foundations.

A decline in democratic quality can be observed worldwide. The terms populism, nationalism, illiberalism, and authoritarianism are omnipresent in attempts to explain and describe this development. The e-paper examines overlaps, differences and their relationship to one another, highlights global and regional trends of autocratization and highlights the consequences of this development for civil society in the affected countries.

Nineteen Dos and nine Don'ts explained, which are helpful for developing a successful Global Biodiversity Framework.

Stop flooding the world with plastic! For the first time in Germany, major civil society actors have come together in an alliance to resolve the plastics crisis and have formulated 15 demands for the German government to act on.

This special edition of Perspectives was compiled with the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s North Africa offices and the Transform Africa project. It is dedicated to the emerging conversation of alternative approaches that challenge the historical bias towards the industrialisation of agriculture and the food system as the main strategy to address food insecurity while preparing for a +2°C world.