green modernisation

For five years,  a great festival of green politics has been taking place in Poland every mid-July, the Green Summer University is organised by the Green Zone Foundation in cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Warsaw and the Green European Foundation (GEF). Every year, activists, experts and politicians from Poland and abroad come together to discuss the most important challenges of green policy in the face of a multidimensional ecological crisis.

The energy sector in Ukraine is undergoing a fundamental transition. Yet, to overcome old structures and deep-rooted corruption, Ukraine needs a clear long-term strategy on the transition to green economy and sustainable energy. German and the EU technical support can play a key role in this process.

We find ourselves at a crossroads between environmental disaster and a new industrial revolution. Decoupling economic growth from environmental consumption is an ambitious goal, but also an achievable one. ‘Green Growth, Smart Growth’ by Ralf Fücks outlines a way forward in this great transformation, and does so in the conviction that the dangers posed by climate change can be overcome through a new approach to economics, innovation and proactive policymaking.

The report by the Green European Foundation gives an overview of the "recovery packages" introduced by governments around the globe and reveals that the European Union is lagging behind the United States and Asia in terms of the Green share of those recovery plans. The authors show the economic and employment potential of a Green New Deal and that the EU has the possibility of leading the way.The report takes a pragmatic approach in the sense that it focuses primarily on how to "green" immediate recovery activities in specific economic areas, and how to support the creation of framework conditions which initiate a dynamic for ecological modernisation and structural change. It also identifies key elements for the implementation of a Green New Deal. The report ends with a series of recommendations that urge the European Union and its Member States to focus their programmes on investments that will kick-start a Green economy and provide sustainable ways out of the crisis.