Environmental Policy

Plastic pollution is a defining problem of our time - and one entirely of our own making. But how do we solve it? This article proposes a possible solution: a comprehensive, binding, and forward-looking global plastics treaty.

Dirty dealings protect the powerful and moneyed interests of the oil and gas industry. That is one reason why governments have not been able to meet their emission reduction commitments. Why the battle against climate change and corruption must be fought together.

From the national unilateralism to the European project. The German energy market will only be successful if it cooperates with its European neighbors.

The NGO Natural Justice and its regional partners, with the support of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, have jointly assisted a number of communities to develop community protocols in the context of extractive industries. You can download them and the project report here.

During his visit to Prague in November 2016, Hungarian Green MEP Benedek Jávor gave an interview to EurActiv.cz on the latest development around the controversial project of Hungarian nuclear power plant Paks II.

The G20 Hamburg Summit in July 2017 will be about nothing less than how globalization should be governed in the future. The G20 countries will have to respond to the key question of our times: How should a globalized world economy be coordinated for the benefit of all humanity against the backdrop of economic uncertainty, higher levels of inequality, climate change, refugees and migration?

Parties to the CBD need to send a strong message to their climate counterparts to find real solutions that work for ecosystems and people instead of offering quick technofixes.

At the UN’s COP 22 climate conference in Marrakech, the international community closed ranks despite (or perhaps because of?) the election of Donald Trump as the next U.S. president.

We don’t need any “reconciliation of the economy and ecology”. Instead, we should be saying no to destructive and exploitative projects and policies - and yes to a repoliticisation of environmental debate.

With this open letter, 30 international conservation and environmental leaders demand that “gene drives should not be promoted as conservation tools.” The letter was also signed by Barbara Unmüßig of the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

The gene-drive technology is supposed to enable deliberate extinctions of “pest” species, in order to save “favored” species and stop the global biodiversity loss. The risks are obvious - and the existing regulatory framework is absolutely unsuitable.

Last December in Paris, 196 governments agreed on the need to limit global warming to 1.5°C. But political constraints are causing some to advocate solutions that will do more harm than good.

The Skopje2014 urban reconstruction project is the biggest infrastructure investment in the entire Macedonian history. This video delineates the costs and presents the corruptive machinations behind the project.

The UN climate summit in Marrakech from 7 to 18 November, is the crucial next step for operationalizing the Paris Agreement. Many controversial issues such as damages caused by climate change and financing for the poorest countries are on the agenda.

Trade with compensation credits is a prime example of how abstractions influence environmental policy. The astonishing reduction of unique habitats to a few measurable indicators is a prerequisite for trading biodiversity offsets.

The call for an economic valuation of nature, and in particular for limits ​​on pollution and the destruction of nature, is linked to the demand for a more flexible implementation of environmental laws and regulations. The idea of “compensation instead of reduction” is intended to guarantee this flexibility.

Corporations whose business models require the exploitation and destruction of nature are increasingly marketing products as carbon-neutral and deforestation-free. This is made possible by the concept of “compensation instead of reduction”. How does it work?  

Trading in compensation credits is used to legalize emissions that exceed binding regulatory limits. It also occurs in areas without legal limits.

An ecological crisis that is becoming increasingly hard to ignore is confronting policymakers with a dilemma: they are being called upon to protect the conditions for life on Earth without overly hampering industrial production and economic growth.

At this year's World Conservation Congress in Hawai'i ethical and social concerns about the use of a controversial synthetic biology technology were raised: gene drives. This genetic engineering technique has the ability to change the world we know.