Tailwind for environmental policy

For the first time in history, in 2016, the UN appointed an Independent Group of Scientists to produce a Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR) to inform the high-level political forum on sustainable development when it meets under the auspices of the United Nations General Assembly to review the progress made on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Among this independent group is Wolfgang Lutz.

The participants of the SDG Summit in September 2019 in New York were in complete agreement that the transformative potential of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has by far not been reached, and that the 2030 Agenda has to be supported by a „Decade of Action and Delivery“. The first GSDR titled The Future is Now: Science for Achieving Sustainable Development emphasizes that the global development in areas such as climate change and biodiversity are cause for concern, and presents several courses of action.

The focus of this conference lies on the GSDR report in the context of the German environmenal policy. It aims to inform about the main issues and results of the report, and to discuss the next steps on a global level. The transformation approaches of the report will be correlated to actual options for action that support the achievement of the SDGs on a national and international level. 

The event is organized by the Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety in collaboration with the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) Germany, the German Environment Agency, the Oeko-Institut, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH, and the German Development Institute. The State Secretary at the Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, Jochen Flasbarth will open the event, that will be followed by a panel discussion with some authors of the GSDR report, Wolfgang Lutz and Peter Messerli.

The full report, The Future is Now: Science for Achieving Sustainable Development, can be found here: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/gsdr2019

The Independent Group of Scientists has also published a summary of their recommendations in Nature Sustainability:

Messerli P, Kim EM, Lutz W, Moatti J-P, Richardson K, Saidam M, Smith D, Eloundou-Enyegue P, et al. (2019). Expansion of sustainability science needed for the SDGs. Nature Sustainability DOI:10.1038/s41893-019-0394-z.

Event details:

Title: Rückenwind für Umweltpolitik – Kernbotschaften des ersten Globalen Nachhaltigkeitsberichts

Date: 29 November 2019, 10AM-1.30PM

Location: Bundesministerium für Umwelt, Naturschutz und nukleare Sicherheit Berlin
Stresemannstr. 128-130, 10117 Berlin, Deutschland

Registration: For more information and registration please visit the event website.

The event language will be German.

Last edited: 01 December 2019