Category: Worth Reading and Watching

How to save the oceans?

Dorothea Wehrmann, Jacqueline Götze, Michał Łuszczuk, Katarzyna Radzik-Maruszak and Arne Riedel illustrate why and how exactly the UN decade should be used to foster transdisciplinary research, the inclusion of place-based knowledge and collaborative knowledge agendas.

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Start of the UN Ocean Science Decade

On 1 June, the United Nations proclaimed the Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. Ina Lehmann explains what benefits marine protected areas can have for marine ecosystems. She explains why it is so important that they are not only effectively implemented but also socially just.

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Federal Conference on Municipal Development Policy

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.

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Climate and Disaster Risk Financing Instruments: An Overview

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.

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Openness: A Key Factor for Smart Cities

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.

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Peace Report 2021 \ Europe can do more!

“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.

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Worse is worse and better doesn’t matter?

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.

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African-German Leadership Academy founded

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.

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