It is with great pleasure that I would like to inform you that our office has moved. Our new address is: Heinrich Böll Foundation - 1432 K Street, NW - Suite 500 - Washington, DC 20005 (Same building as the Prêt á Manger; entrance facing McPherson Square). Please update your records.  

Atlantic-community.org is inviting students and young professionals to contribute their policy ideas on key issues of the upcoming NATO Summit in Chicago in the policy workshop, "Your Ideas, Your NATO." Participate for a chance to discuss your ideas directly with decision makers, including US Ambassador Philip Murphy and a NATO representative, during the May 21 summit.

Today, prospects for sustainable development remain a serious challenge as our global economy, our natural environment, our social well-being, and our political structures are in crisis. From the economy to climate change to food and agriculture, systems of governance are in disarray. Everyone is struggling more intensely in today’s world – particularly women and girls. 

The discovery of 72 killed migrants in the northern state of Tamaulipas in August 2011 was a tragic event that accelerated and enhanced public awareness for the problem of severe human rights violations toward migrants in Mexico. Since then, new cases are continually coming out in the open. The majority of the migrants killed in Mexico are never identified and remain nameless. 

Perspectives is a publication series of the Africa offices of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung. With this series, we intend to let experts from Africa express their views about current political issues in their region. Perspectives focuses on Southern- , East- and West Africa where the foundation has established offices.

International funding for reductions of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation as well as for forest conservation (REDD+) has dramatically increased over the past few years. This ODI/Boell Foundation policy brief looks at lessons from the early experience, the challenges that finance delivery and implementation face and discusses some policy options for improvement.

In early 2011, the African Development Bank (AfDB) indicated its intention to establish and manage an Africa Green Fund to support African states that individually lack the knowledge and technology to secure needed global climate funds. This mapping study evaluates the AfDB's actual track record on sectors and initiatives related to climate change as a clue to the Bank’s suitability to manage any future infusions of funds to address climate change in Africa.

What deep currents are likely to affect Europe and the United States over the next decade? Will they draw Europeans and Americans together or drive them apart? In this new book, Dan Hamilton and Kurt Volker offer “four futures” for the transatlantic relationship – each a narrative of how trends evident today could interact and evolve to shape the world we live in tomorrow.

Eleven years ago, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1325 (October 31, 2000). This groundbreaking resolution sent a significant message to many countries, including Israel. Anat Thon Ashkenazi of the NGO Itach-Maaki Women Lawyers for Social Justice describes the efforts of the implementation of UNSCR 1325 in Israel to date.

The seven months long process to design a new Green Climate Fund, on which a 40 member Transitional Committee has embarked since the end of April, ended at the fourth TC Meeting in Cape Town with a "sub-optimal" outcome as TC members failed to reach a consensus on a draft governing instrument for the Fund.

This report highlights the untapped business opportunities for farmers that can be found in renewable energy.

It is young people at the heart of the Arab revolt who are rebelling not for jihad but for freedom and democracy. Nevertheless, bin Laden's death opens up huge opportunities worldwide. President Barack Obama needs to follow up on the promise he made in Cairo, two years ago, when he pledged to build bridges to the Muslim world.

South Africa plays host to the next UN climate conference in Durban from November 28 to December 9, 2011. This dossier provides an analysis of the major issues at stake and the context in which the negotiations will be held. It offers ongoing commentary and updates on major developments in the run up to the negotiations.

A group of eight Sub-Sahara African dignitaries from government, parliament and civil society consisting of partners of the Heinrich Boell Foundation’s regional offices in Africa is visiting Washington, DC from May 24 to May 27 to learn more about actors, instruments and policies involved in financing adaptation measures in Africa.

On Friday, May 13, 2011, the Heinrich Böll Foundation North America and the Brookings Institution co-hosted the event Quo Vadis, Germany? Making Sense of Berlin’s Foreign Policy in an Era of Global Change with Cem Özdemir.

Global negotiators and observers met for two days in Mexico City at the end of April to start their work of designing the future Green Climate Fund. This first analysis by Liane Schalatek describes options for and potential obstacles to the process. 

On the road to ecological modernity, prosperity is possible without having to destroy the basis of our livelihood.

The upcoming summit "Rio+20" is not only to set the stage for a green economy, but also to provide an impetus for the institutional reform of the UN environmental sector. An analysis by Barbara Unmüßig.

Should Arab countries with less advanced technological capacities invest in nuclear power that proved uncontrollable in Fukushima, Japan? Activists and policy-makers from the Arab World and Europe critically discuss these and other questions in this report.

Critics of renewable energies argue their costs are too high. This analysis by the Wuppertal Institute gives an overview of the costs and benefits of Germany’s Renewable Energies Act (EEG).

In cooperation with the Worldwatch Institute, the Heinrich Böll Foundation North America organized this event to discuss the prospects of nuclear power after the accident in Fukushima, Japan.

Ralf Fücks, President of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, gave a welcome address at the conference “Opportunities and Challenges: The Future of E-mobility in Germany and the US”. The e-mobility conference was hosted by the German Embassy and The Representative of German Industry and Trade in Washington D.C. on March 30, as part of the Transatlantic Climate Bridge initiative.

Climate change is the biggest environmental problem currently confronting humanity and affecting all socioeconomic sectors in the country and around the world. Its impact, however, is differentiated by gender, economic, social and geopolitical factors. In this case study, interviews with women and men in six communities in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas were conducted.

Americans consumed 275lb of meat in 2010. That is more than 341 grams each day. Most Americans do not know - or care to know - where their daily meat comes from. The truth is: in the United States, 79% of pigs are raised on farms with 2,000 pigs or more. These factory farms promised better employment, affordable food for everybody and better, more efficient farming practices. They delivered the opposite.

The Heinrich Boell Foundation Prague published a new report on the state of nuclear energy and plans to expand it in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria. In many of these countries high-level politicians are vigorously promoting the development of nuclear energy.

This campaign handbook by the Green European Foundation is an online guide to successful political campaigning. Its authors are mainly Green Party campaigners and activists from a range of countries across Europe, each with a different background, all with valuable experience to share.

The unfolding disaster at the nuclear plants in Japan, which involves some of the oldest reactors in the country, starkly shows that the United States’ current policy of rubber-stamping 20-year license extensions for its aging reactors is very dangerous.

This series of 11 short introductory briefings, written in co-operation with the Overseas Development Institute, looks at various aspects of climate change financing. It gives readers unfamiliar with the global discourse about funding for climate action a better understanding of financial flows, the regions and countries they reach, and the climate interventions they target.

This is an invitation only event.

In cooperation with the Center for American Progress

February, 2010
If the Copenhagen Accord on climate change can be called a small step forward or a grand failure depends on the regional perspective. Two months after the Copenhagen climate summit, this paper sheds some light on the different regional and national evaluations of the conference and analyzes how perceptions on the outcome of the conference vary between key countries and regions.

Outreach Manager
Assistant to the Executive Director
contact: Milena.Jurca[at]us.boell.org
Tel: +1 (202) 216-9850