How exactly and to what extent do German local authorities promote development policy? Is there a discernible trend here? What motivates local authorities and how can existing work be stepped up further? Eva Dick, Paul Marschall and Christopher Wingens share insights into a current DIE study on municipal development policy in Germany.
This past Saturday marked World Environment Day, and in the spirit of the day, students and alumni from the Joint Master’s of Geography of Environment and Human Risk programme gathered in Bonn’s Rheinaue park to pick up trash.
The ocean covers over 70% of the planet and produces at least 50% of the planet’s oxygen. For this and many other important reasons, and to celebrate the World Oceans Day, our UNU-EHS expert Dr. Jack O’Connor explains some interesting facts about the ocean and its relationship with life and livelihoods.
Since April the La Soufrière volcano, located in the north of the largest island of the country of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean, has erupted multiple times. Strong explosions generated ash plumes, which are not only impacting the entire island of Saint Vincent, but also transporting massive amounts of ash to the neighboring island country of Barbados in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies.
As climate change increases the frequency and impacts of large scale natural hazards, it is critical that governments put in place or update actionable, comprehensive, transparent and inter-ministerial disaster risk management (DRM) plans. For these plans to be implementable and cost-effective, governments should include a climate and disaster risk financing (CDRF) strategy as an integral component of their DRM plan. This document provides a brief overview of the instruments that are available and may be considered as part of the CDRF strategy.
In this chapter, the concept of openness in the context of smart cities is introduced. The concept describes on multiple levels how open (or closed) a city is. Openness in smart cities incorporates three key dimensions – transparency, participation, and collaboration – which affect various domains such as data processing or service provision. Using examples from ongoing and previous research, this chapter also discusses how to realize openness in practice and what benefits and drawbacks can result from different degrees of openness.
“Europe can do more!” This is what the four leading German peace research institute call for in their current Peace Report, which they presented at the Federal Press Conference in Berlin on 8 June 2021. The European Union must increase its ability to act within the global power structure to respond to global challenges by providing non-military solutions.
Increasing consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for environmentally friendly products is a key challenge for sustainable development in market economies. Still, how consumers react to favorable and unfavorable environmental information of different quantitative extents is largely unknown. This research therefore uses prospect theory and competing theoretical foundations to derive pertinent hypotheses and test them by using a multi-level structural equation model.
DIE’s Researchers Christine Hackenesch and Julian Bergmann have, together with Jan Orbie from the University of Ghent, edited a special issue of the Journal of Common Market Studies (JCMS) on “The politicisation of European development policies”.
Between 26 and 7 May 2021, a shortened digital pilot of the newly founded African-German Leadership Academy was hosted by the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE). DIE’s Director, Prof. Dr. Anna-Katharina Hornidge introduces the Academy in a short video.
German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS)
Tulpenfeld 6
53113 Bonn
