IDOS mourns the loss of Prof. Klaus Töpfer, who, as one of Germany’s most prominent elected officials in the United Nations, played a key role in shaping international cooperation in the fields of the environment and sustainable development. As former Environment Minister (1987-1994), Töpfer was appointed Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 1998, which he headed and modernised until 2006. Among other things, the Global Ministerial Environment Forum established by Töpfer is considered a pioneer of the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) established in 2014.
Töpfer was a valued partner of IDOS. We particularly thank him for the excellent cooperation within the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN-Germany), of which he was the first co-chair and subsequently continued to support as chair of the steering committee, as well as for the collaboration within the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) and the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS), now the Research Institute for Sustainability (RIFS), which he founded.
We will always honour his life and his work for a better, fairer and more sustainable world. He passed away on 8 June 2024 at the age of 85. Our heartfelt condolences go to his wife Mechthild Töpfer and his family.
