Sustainable Futures

Kategorie: From the institute

  • New team for equal opportunities at DIE

    Photo: Andrea Cordes
    Andrea Cordes
    Photo: Jacqueline Goetze
    Jacqueline Goetze

    Andrea Cordes and Jacqueline Götze have been elected as new equal opportunities officer and deputy equal opportunities officer at DIE.

    Andrea Cordes has worked at DIE as a project coordinator since April 2017, initially for the Managing Global Governance (MGG) Programme and now for the Research Programme ‘Transformation of Political (Dis-)Order: Institutions, Values and Peace’. As a former project coordinator of the German Committee of UN Women, Andrea Cordes is very familiar with questions of equal opportunities.

    Jacqueline Götze has been a researcher with the Sustainable Development Solutions Network Germany (SDSN Germany) at DIE since January 2019. Together with Andrea Cordes, she wants to work on the topics of gender mainstreaming and diversity management at DIE.

    The term of office of Dr. Tatjana Reiber and Dr. Eva Dick as equal opportunities officer and deputy equal opportunities officer ended in November. DIE thanks both of them for their voluntary commitment that aims to put forward relevant measures for an institute that stands for equal rights, fairness and tolerance. The institute looks forward to the cooperation with the newly elected successors, Andrea Cordes and Jacqueline Götze.

  • From coca to cocaine – exhibition on alternatives to drug crops

    Foyer des DIE mit Stellwänden
    Impressions from the vernissage on November 19 in the foyer of the DIE, ©DIE

    On 19 November, the exhibition „From coca to cocaine – the forgotten link in the chain“ was opened at DIE.

    It shows how “Alternative Development” can open up legal perspectives for smallholder farmers who make up their living from the illicit cultivation of drug crops such as coca or opium poppy. On 11 large panels with pictures, infographics and texts the exhibition highlights important topics around the development of alternatives to drug crop cultivation. These are eg. appropriate high value cash crops, infrastructure, access to legal markets, land rights and the sensitisation for gender issues.

    Opening speech in the evening ©DIE

    At the same time, the exhibition clears up prejudices about the drug crop cultivation. Prejudices are, for instance that drug crops make farmers rich or that the eradication of the plants is sufficient to solve the problem. So far, the development of alternatives and more generally the understanding for drug crop farmers does not receive sufficient attention compared to repressive measures – only 0.1% of the global development budget is invested in these measures. Yet, there are successes from which one can learn, for instance in Thailand.

    The exhibition wants to contribute to this learning. It has been designed on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) by the sector project „Sustainable Rural Areas“ of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, which technically accompanies several projects in drug crop cultivation countries and advises the Federal Government on the subject.

    The exhibition is open until 18 December during business hours (Mon-Fri 8-18: 30) in the foyer of the DIE to visit.

  • New project on sustainable development pathways

    Gruppenfoto auf Brücke
    Group photo of the Kick-Off Meeting at PIK ©DIE

    The project Sustainable Development Pathways Achieving Human Well-Being While Safeguarding the Climate and Planet Earth (SHAPE) was launched during a Kick-Off Meeting at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) from 12 to 14 November 2019. The project aims to develop and analyse Sustainable Development Pathways (SDPs) that achieve the SDGs in 2030 and maintain sustainable development to reach the Paris climate goals by 2100. DIE’s project partners of SHAPE are the PIK, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS), the Stockholm Resilience Center (SRC), the University of Utrecht, and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

    The primary goals of the meeting were to coordinate the next steps in delivering the tasks as stipulated by the project, to identify cross-cutting issues that would require more strategic interactions by the partners as well as discuss the content of the different deliverables. The German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) through the Programme Environmental Governance and Transformation to Sustainability leads the work package on governing the transformation. In this regard, DIE particularly contributes to research on governing transformations to sustainability and on policy integration. In addition, DIE intends to highlight social science perspectives to improve the relevance and impact of modeling, scenario-building and projections to policy-making by providing context for assumptions, narratives and targets.

    The project SHAPE is part of AXIS, an ERA-NET initiated by JPI Climate, and funded by FORMAS (Sweden), FFG/BMWFW (Austria), DLR/BMBF, NWO (Netherlands) and RCN (Norway) with co-funding by the European Union.

  • Current Directions in Water Scarcity Research – New Publication on Drought Challenges

    A new book entitled „Drought Challenges: Policy Options for Developing Countries“ (Volume 2, 1st Edition) published recently deals with current developments in research on water scarcity. Michael Brüntrup from the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) is co-editor.The book is the extension of research by DIE on drought in the Horn of Africa undertaken in the framework of DIE’s research project “Promoting food security in rural sub-Saharan Africa: the role of agricultural intensification, social security and results-oriented approaches”, which was funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) under its special initiative “One World, No Hunger” (SEWOH).

    Editors: Everisto Mapedza, Daniel Tsegai, Michael Brüntrup, Robert McLeman
    Paperback ISBN: 9780128148204
    eBook ISBN: 9780128148211

    You can buy the book in Elsevier’s online shop here.

    New book on drought research: The new book by co-editor Michael Brüntrup connects the biophysical, social, economic, policy and institutional aspects of droughts across multiple regions in the developing world. The book Drought Challenges: Policy Options for Developing Countries provides an understanding of the occurrence and impacts of droughts for developing countries and vulnerable sub-groups, such as women and pastoralists. It presents tools for assessing vulnerabilities, introduces individual policies to combat the effects of droughts and highlights the importance of integrated multi-sectoral approaches and drought networks at various levels. Currently, there are few books on the market that address the growing need for knowledge on these cross-cutting issues. As drought can occur anywhere, the systemic connections between droughts and livelihoods are a key factor in development in many dryland and agriculturally-dependent nations.

  • Access to health insurance reduces child labour

    In cooperation with the World Bank, Christoph Strupat, researcher in programme „Transformation of Economic and Social Systems“ at DIE, examined the effects of nationwide health insurance in Ghana. The authors show that there were not only savings in individual health expenditures, but that health insurance also makes a significant contribution to reducing child labour and thus increase class attendance of children in schools. High medical costs after sickness, child labour and educational poverty are closely linked in many developing countries: Lack of education and health care is one of the main causes of material impoverishment. And without education, poverty is often transmitted from one generation to the next. National insurances enable an additional „social benefit“ over and above the direct insurance benefit and can reduce child labour and prevent the inheritance of poverty. It is therefore worth taking this enormous gain into account when implementing health insurance schemes.