Annual Report 2022

Foreword

A year is not a long time. We humans, who passed the eight-billion-mark last year, have been changing our earth for more than 3,000 years. Today, every single year matters since climate change could make parts of the world uninhabitable if we don’t act quickly. On March 20, 2023, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a synthesis report urging that we must correct course and get back on the 1.5-degree path, as laid out in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.
We know very well what we must do to achieve this: phase out all fossil fuels and expand renewable energies across the board, make great strides in energy efficiency, and massively reduce our energy usage. Our mantra must be: All hands on deck and full speed ahead! All sectors, all social classes, and all countries must join the effort.

A year is a long time. In a year dominated by the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, an energy crisis, protests in Iran, inflation, and climate change, we at the Heinrich Böll Foundation have achieved a lot – in climate and energy, agricultural and environmental, as well as in foreign policy areas, and also for Europe and in defense of the rule of law. One of our key missions is to promote democratic movements, especially when they operate under difficult circumstances. For example, prior to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, our Kyiv Office supported human rights activists who had fled Belarus – but then Ukraine became a dangerous place for them too. Since the outbreak of war, our team in Kyiv has continued its work under the direst conditions. In Mexico, we support the establishment of a nationwide victims’ network, as people there are searching for an estimated 100,000 victims of enforced disappearance.

We were delighted to learn about the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureates: the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties, Belarusian human rights activist Ales Bialiatski, and the Russian human rights organization Memorial, our oldest partner organization.

Our tasks as a political foundation also include communicating knowledge – by means of publications, podcasts, educational films, or through basic training. Here our Atlases have been particularly successful, gaining wide circulation and with translations into many languages. In 2022, we published the Pesticide Atlas, which provides visual information about toxins in agriculture. Other successful formats include the climate podcast Karbon, which we sponsored and which received the German-Czech Journalist Award. The newsletter Free Courts by NGO Wolne Sądy, published with the support of our Warsaw Office, keeps the wider public informed about threats to the rule of law in Poland.

For us personally, this annual report also means taking stock of our first year as Foundation Presidents. We have learned that the Foundation is a place to develop ideas and solutions to complex problems and then pitch them to policymakers. But as of 2023, it is also an institution in need of structural renewal. That is why we at the Heinrich Böll Foundation have launched the 360-degree change agenda. What do we mean by that?

360 degrees refers to our realization that the old departments and sectors, within which we operate, no longer work, that is, domestic and foreign affairs, environment and climate versus economic policy, the West as opposed to the Global South. The world’s problems have become too complex for such compartmentalization. We can only hope to solve them when we consider and understand them from all angles, in other words: with a 360-degree view. That is why our efforts at institutional reform are not a self-centered act of navel-gazing; reform is the groundwork that empowers us to do our work effectively.

As an example, let’s take the following fundamental question: How do we achieve a just transformation of economic structures – nationally as well as internationally – and how do we promote it in the political arena? What does this mean for Germany and Europe, for our international partnerships and collaborations? These complex questions require input from the point of view of ecology, of foreign and development policy, of feminist, and economic, as well as financial perspectives – and that from all continents. This annual report serves three purposes: It is a tribute to all of our hard work as a network of foundations, for which we would like to thank all our partners, volunteers, and employees around the world; it is a tool for strategic reflection that enables us to recalibrate our efforts; and it is a reminder that we must change now in order to mobilize all our energy and move forward in different ways. Doing this, we will be mindful of our objectives so we can make a difference with invigorated efficacy. We wish you an inspiring and stimulating read!

Cordially
Imme Scholz and Jan Philipp Albrecht
Berlin, May 2023