Sustainable Futures

Schlagwort: Sustainability

  • How Seville Can Sow the Seeds for a New Spring: Financing (Sustainable) Development Must Turn Universal!

    Image of the Square in Seville, “4th International Conference on Financing for Development 30 June–3 July 2025 Seville, Spain”

    These are not easy times to think about reforming or even rebuilding the international cooperation architecture to meet the challenges facing humanity. When international law is bluntly disregarded, multilateral institutions get openly attacked and institutions for global solidarity are dismantled, it is only natural to defend what has been achieved as far as possible and, at best, to strive for incremental improvements. However, this entails the risk of remaining stuck in outdated patterns instead of looking for fresh solutions for a thoroughly changed world. (mehr …)

  • A more ambitious G20 for a sustainable post-pandemic recovery and transformation

    Photo: Stairs leading out of a dark wood into the light, Image by wen8707270 on Pixabay

    The COVID-19 pandemic submerged the world for more than a year now, and global infection numbers are still rising. There are huge differences in the ability of governments and societies to cope with the pandemic: while Europe and the Americas remain epicentres of the disease, there are signs that infections are now also picking up across the African continent.

    In an interesting turn-of-tide in discussion, the IMF calls for more public expenditure and higher taxation of the wealthy. The IMF states that economic recovery is possible in 2021 but dependent on both, access to vaccines and other medical interventions, and continuous effective policy support. Policy support needs to cushion the effects of the economic contraction, to decarbonize energy systems and economies, and for intensified multilateral cooperation to ensure universal access to vaccines and therapeutics and adequate financial liquidity of highly indebted countries.

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  • What potential do voluntary sustainability standards have?

    Powerpoint Präsentation mit Mensch in Vortragsraum
    Insights from the Stakeholder Awareness Meeting ©DIE

    Voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) encompass more than 500 ecolabels that are used in 199 countries involving US$ 50 billion total value. In November, the Managing Global Governance (MGG) Programme of the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) co-organised Stakeholder Awareness Meeting: South African Initiative on Voluntary Sustainability Standards in Pretoria, South Africa.

    More than 70 representatives from the public sector as well as from research, civil society and business/industry attended the event. The goals of the meeting were to promote public awareness in South Africa on the potentials of VSS, engage and empower multiple stakeholders to support the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well as to initiate the momentum to establish a national framework such as a National Platform on VSS in South Africa.

    VSS are an instrument to achieve sustainable development goals, and they are also additional opportunities for business and industry. These standards are significant for businesses exporting abroad, as well as for Micro-, Small-, and Medium-size Enterprises (MSMEs) seeking to optimise their business operations, thus, reducing costs through efficiency.
    Using innovative formats such as one-to-one interviews, world cafe and fish bowl, the DIE co-organised stakeholder meeting provided space for exchange among experts from both South Africa and from other countries with emerging economies such as Brazil, India, Colombia, and Vietnam, which already have a national platform on VSS.

    The insights gathered at the meeting were collected and will be evaluated in a report that will be published and shared to all stakeholders. You can also follow the debates under the hashtag #VSSforBioeconomyZA on Twitter. For further information please contact Ariel Hernandez.

  • Welche Potenziale haben freiwillige Nachhaltigkeitsstandards?

    Powerpoint Präsentation mit Mensch in Vortragsraum
    Vortrag beim Stakeholder-Awareness-Meeting ©DIE

    Die freiwilligen Nachhaltigkeitsstandards (Voluntary Sustainability Standards, VSS) umfassen mehr als 500 Zertifizierungen und Umweltsiegel, die in 199 Ländern mit einem Gesamtwert von 50 Milliarden US-Dollar verwendet werden. Das Programm Managing Global Governance (MGG) des Deutschen Instituts für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) hat vom 6. bis 7. November in Pretoria, Südafrika, das Stakeholder-Awareness-Meeting: South African Initiative on Voluntary Sustainability Standards mitorganisiert. Über 76 Vertreter*innen aus dem öffentlichen Dienst sowie aus Forschung, Zivilgesellschaft und Wirtschaft / Industrie nahmen an der Veranstaltung teil. Ziel des Treffens war es, die Öffentlichkeit in Südafrika für die Potenziale von VSS zu sensibilisieren, mehrere Interessengruppen in einen Dialog einzubeziehen und zu befähigen, die Umsetzung von SDGs zu unterstützen. Das Treffen sollte zudem den Anstoß geben, einen nationalen Rahmen wie z.B. eine Nationale Plattform für VSS in Südafrika zu etablieren.

    VSS sind ein Instrument zur Erreichung nachhaltiger Entwicklungsziele und bieten zusätzliche Chancen für Unternehmen und Industrie. Diese Standards sind sowohl für Unternehmen, die ins Ausland exportieren, als auch für Kleinst-, Klein- und Mittelunternehmen (KKMU) von Bedeutung, da sie dadurch ihre Geschäftsabläufe optimieren und so die Kosten durch Effizienz senken.

    Mit innovativen Formaten wie Einzelinterviews, World Cafe und Fish Bowl bot das vom DIE mitorganisierte Stakeholder-Meeting Raum für den Austausch zwischen Expert*innen aus Südafrika und anderen Ländern mit aufstrebenden Volkswirtschaften wie Brasilien, Indien, Kolumbien und Vietnam, die bereits eine nationale Plattform für VSS haben.

    Die bei dem Treffen diskutierten Erkenntnisse wurden gesammelt und werden in einem Bericht ausgewertet, der veröffentlicht und an alle Beteiligten weitergegeben wird. Sie können die Diskussionen auch auf Twitter unter dem Hashtag #VSSforBioeconomyZA nachlesen. Für weitere Informationen wenden Sie sich bitte an Ariel Hernandez.

  • 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.