Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development : Boost for German sustainability policy

Press re­lease of 11.01.2017 |

BERLIN - 'One World - Our Re­spon­si­bil­ity': Ger­many has sent a strong sig­nal for a new sense of global re­spon­si­bil­ity and is tack­ling the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals, which the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity adopted in 2015.

Fol­low­ing the adop­tion of the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Strat­egy in Cab­i­net, Ger­man De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Gerd Müller said:

'This new Strat­egy makes a huge dif­fer­ence to Ger­many's sus­tain­abil­ity pol­icy and, thus, to all of us. Our goal is to build a world with­out hunger and to pro­tect the nat­ural re­sources that en­sure our sur­vival. What we do in Ger­many has a global im­pact. Through its Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Strat­egy, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment is shoul­der­ing its re­spon­si­bil­ity. Sus­tain­abil­ity must be­come our fun­da­men­tal at­ti­tude in life. Each of us can con­tribute in very prac­ti­cal ways in or­der to make glob­al­i­sa­tion fair: through the way we eat, through the clothes we wear and through our con­sump­tion pat­terns. It be­came clear a long time ago that we are liv­ing in One World and each of us has re­spon­si­bil­ity for it. This is also the guid­ing prin­ci­ple of Ger­many's de­vel­op­ment pol­icy.'

The Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Strat­egy charts a course for Ger­many to tackle is­sues such as cli­mate ac­tion, ur­ban­i­sa­tion, sus­tain­able con­sump­tion pat­terns, fair trade, and equal op­por­tu­ni­ties for girls and women. It men­tions a num­ber of spe­cific pro­jects through which Ger­many is con­tribut­ing to the achieve­ment of the 17 Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals in the field of de­vel­op­ment co­op­er­a­tion. For ex­am­ple, the has launched a spe­cial ini­tia­tive called 'One World - No Hunger', which fo­cuses on re­duc­ing hunger and mal­nu­tri­tion. It has set up thir­teen green in­no­va­tion cen­tres, as­sist­ing 500,000 small­holder farms.

Every year, the BMZ launches cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion pro­grammes that save more than 200 mil­lion tonnes of emis­sions. This is equiv­a­lent to the emis­sions of 100 coal power plants. The BMZ also sup­ports Africa as a whole along the road to­wards sus­tain­able en­ergy gen­er­a­tion. Thanks to Ger­many's sup­port for the Africa Re­new­able En­ergy Ini­tia­tive (AREI), en­ergy gen­er­a­tion from re­new­able sources is to reach a level by 2020 that is equiv­a­lent to ten coal power plants. The BMZ is glad to act as a com­pe­tent part­ner for cli­mate so­lu­tions in emerg­ing and de­vel­op­ing economies. The Min­istry al­ready ac­counts for nearly 90 per cent of the Ger­man gov­ern­ment's in­vest­ments in in­ter­na­tional cli­mate ac­tion.

In or­der to im­ple­ment its ed­u­ca­tion strat­egy, which was pub­lished ear­lier and is en­ti­tled 'Cre­at­ing eq­ui­table op­por­tu­ni­ties for qual­ity ed­u­ca­tion', the BMZ works with its part­ner coun­tries in the fields of ba­sic ed­u­ca­tion in the broad sense, vo­ca­tional ed­u­ca­tion and higher ed­u­ca­tion. Ger­many is the world's largest donor of bi­lat­eral of­fi­cial de­vel­op­ment co­op­er­a­tion sup­port in the area of vo­ca­tional train­ing. The re­gional fo­cus of these ef­forts is on Africa, and this in­cludes re­gions from which peo­ple mi­grate or have be­come dis­placed.

The new edi­tion of the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Strat­egy adopted to­day rep­re­sents the most com­pre­hen­sive re­vi­sion of the strat­egy since its first adop­tion in 2002. By re­vis­ing Ger­many's Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Strat­egy, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment has charted a course for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the 2030 Agenda. That Agenda ap­plies uni­ver­sally to all coun­tries - in­dus­tri­alised coun­tries, emerg­ing economies and de­vel­op­ing coun­tries alike.