In a few days, international students from the Hertie School in Berlin will be participating in a discussion forum with German Environment Minister Peter Altmaier and Winfried Kretschmann, the Green Party’s first state premier in Baden-Württemberg. The debate will focus on Germany’s “Energiewende,” literally an energy turnaround involving ambitious plans to phase out nuclear power and boost renewable energy.

Starting today until March 13, we’ll be introducing the students taking part in the debate. We begin with Dennis Mwaura from Kenya.

Dennis Mwaura, Kenya from DW_Global Ideas on Vimeo.

Klaus Esterluss and Kerstin Schnatz, Doha

They all had to squeeze through: Shoppers and staff from surrounding restaurants moved past a tree made out of cans and tires at Doha’s traditional market area yesterday. 16 year old Mourad Farahat from Egypt and his friends from the organisation „You Think Green“ tried to raise the awareness of passers by for a greener future. Despite having received a permission for setting up their action at a spacious juncture a few meters further down, security guards told them to move the symbolic tree to a very inconvenient area with hardly any space, between a wall and the outside seating area of a restaurant.

Planting a tree at Doha’s Souq Waqif from DW_Global Ideas on Vimeo.

Critical juncture

By being in this awkward position of Doha’s „Souq Waqif“, the youths shared a fate with the international climate negotiations taking place in the same city that day. Civil society groups watching the international process carefully, are heavily critizising the Qatari Presidency for not showing enough leadership. „Key elements are stalling“ Wael Hmaidan, director of Climate Action Network, said. According to Hmaidan, the talks that are scheduled to end on Friday, December 7^th, were at „a critical juncture“. The NGO expert is in line with young Mourad, when asking for a global reduction of carbon emissions and more money to help poorer countries adapting to climate change.

Author: Kerstin Schnatz

How can we better tackle global environmental problems – such as the loss of biodiversity or air pollution? Many countries believe that the United Nations should have a bigger say in solving these problems – one of the most controversial issues at the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro, where over 115 world leaders come together to discuss global challenges.

The European Union for example favors an „upgrade“ of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) to the same level as more powerful UN bodies, such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation or the World Health Organisation.

But other nations are opposed to this change – including Brazil, host of the summit. According to non governmental organizations watching the Rio+20 negotiations closely, a full scale upgrade of UNEP is by now almost off the table.

German Environment Minister Peter Altmaier sticks to the European position:

It takes a village, goes the saying – and in fighting climate change, many environmentalists say it will take the world. A group of Southern African countries are teaming up to better respond to the challenges of climate change by combining climate studies across the entire region. Angola, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zambia have all agreed to be part of “SASSCAL,” or the Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management. The project is being funded by Germany.

Because climate change is affecting so many millions of people across Africa, SASSCAL countries want to figure out ways to adapt, to manage the wealth of natural resources in the region. to institute sustainable land management and improve living conditions. That’s no easy job, but with research institutes from every participating country working together to study climate change and its impact on resources, the organizers believe a lot can be achieved. And, it sets an important example for the rest of the continent and the world…

The World Wind Energy Association (WWEA) has some good news for the world market for wind turbines. Not only that the market has recovered last year, it also set a new record: 42 gigawatt of new capacity had been installed in 2011, the worldwide total capacity rose up to 239 GW. According to the WWEA todays wind power would be enough to cover 3 % of the world’s electricity demand. China is the biggest player in the business, says the WWEA. The country installed around 18 GW of new wind turbines within 2011, coming to a total capacity of 63 GW – that’s more than one fourth of the global wind capacity. The second largest market for new wind turbines was again the USA, followed by India and Germany, which grew about 2 GW.