©SDSN Germany
Under the title “It’s the governance,…! Sustainability policy in the architecture of the next federal government” the 14th meeting of the Extended Leadership Council of SDSN Germany took place on 9 September 2021.
The event addressed future governance structures in the sustainability architecture of the next German federal government. The first round of talks dealt with the upgrading of processes and structures for the domestic implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the national sustainability strategy. The panelists emphasised that sustainability is not yet at the center of German politics. Important points for strengthening new governance structures in the new federal government would be, among other things, the inclusion of the state objective of sustainability in Basic Law, a benchmark law on ecological intergenerational justice, the strengthening of the role of the German Bundestag in the context of sustainability policy and a more effective implementation of the topic of sustainability in the Federal Chancellery.
The second round of talks dealt with the questions how the 2030 Agenda and the sustainability strategy could be centrally anchored in Germany’s future architecture of international policy and cooperation, how it could be better organised and coordinated across ministries. The panelists emphasised that a silo mentality between internal and external policy fields must be dissolved and that complementary perspectives on domestic and foreign policy action are needed. Appropriate means could be reciprocal partnerships. The discussion underlined that there are no problems of knowledge, but rather problems of implementation in the field of sustainability policy.
