Sessions and Speakers

Keynote Speakers

                             Prof. Dr. Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker

Von Weizsäcker has served as the policy director at the United Nations Centre for Science and Technology for Development and as director of the Institute for European Environmental Policy. He is famous for being the founding president of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, and Energy (1991-2000). Von Weizsäcker is a member of the famous Club of Rome, a global think tank devoted to improving society, and he served on the World Commission on the Social Dimensions of Globalization.

As a member of the Bundestag for the SPD party, the federal parliament of Germany, he became a politician often connected with the environmental tax reform. During this time (1998-2005), he was appointed chairman of the Environmental Committee. He has also served as a professor of interdisciplinary biology and was the founding president of the University of Kassel in Germany.

The connection to Freiburg is personal as Von Weizsäcker received his Ph.D. degree in biology from the Albert-Ludwigs-University. As a keynote speaker he will give an overview of the process of greening the economy, highlighting challenges and possible ways forward.

                                           Dr. habil. Ulrich Hoffmann

Dr. habil. Ulrich Hoffmann is the head of the Trade and Sustainable Development Section at the secretariat of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva. He is the editor in chief of UNCTAD's annual Trade and Environment Review, which analyzes key issues at the intersection between trade, environment and sustainable development.

The UNCTAD Trade and Environment Review 2010 focused on the subject of promoting poles of clean growth to foster the transition to a more sustainable economy. 

Dr. Hoffmann has extensively worked and published on policy approaches to encouraging higher material, resource and energy efficiency in developing countries. He has also implemented analytical and technical assistance activities on promoting the use of sustainable agricultural production methods. Dr. Hoffmann is involved in several fora that develop and promote the use of sustainability standards. Dr. Hoffmann was one of the pioneers in the international commodity sector that advised developing countries on experimenting with various tools of environmental cost internalization and carbon offset financing.

Case Studies

                          Molly Scott Cato

Molly Scott Cato is a green economist and expert in the social economy. She specialises in the issues of trade, work, money and cooperatives. She is a Reader in Green Economics at the Cardiff School of Management and Economics Speaker for the Green Party UK. She is also a member of the lifestyles and livelihoods group of Transition Stroud and regularly addresses other Transition Towns  on economic themes. She actively promotes community agriculture and bioregional economies and is the author of the book “Green Economics – An Introduction to Theory, Policy and Practice”, published in 2009 with Earthscan.

We want Molly to tell us about her experience with community action for the promotion of bioregional economies, the Transition Towns movement and regional currencies. 

Visit her blog:

http://gaianeconomics.blogspot.com/

Her favourite quote:

“Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.” (Milton Friedman)

                  Fábio Luís de Oliveira Rosa

Fábio Luís de Oliveira Rosa founded the Institute for the Development of Natural Energy and Sustainability (IDEAAS) in 1998 and today serves as executive director. IDEAAS works on sustainable development and environmental conservation initiatives in Brazil's rural areas. The mission of IDEAAS is to develop, install and demonstrate models for sustainable development to rural low-income populations using high efficiency and low cost technologies in the fields of renewable energy and agronomic science.  Prior to founding IDEAAS, Mr. Rosa founded Sistemas de Technologia Adequada (STA), or Adequate Technology Systems, in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. STA worked on implantation and management of enterprise structure, development of the photovoltaic and electric fencing markets in rural areas and introduction of technical progress in rural areas. He is also the co-founder of Fábio Rosa & Ricardo Mello Consulting, which helps provide low cost rural electrification programs in the Brazilian states of  Rio Grande do Sul and São Paulo, and has brought rural electrification to 240,000 families.

Mr. Rosa is the recipient of several awards, including The Leapfrog Fund Award presented by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship in both 2006 and 2008; The Fast 50 Award from Fast Company Magazine in 2004; The World Technology Award in the Social Entrepreneur Category in 2004; The Tech Museum of Innovation Award in economic development in 2001; and the ASHOKA  Social Entrepreneurship Prize in 2000.

He received a degree from the Agronomy College of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil in 1982.

Source: http://www.philanthropyforum.org/forum/Rosa,_Fabio_Bio.asp?SnID=441273067

                                                       Derek Eaton

Derek Eaton works as a programme officer with the Economics & Trade Branch (ETB - based in Geneva) of UNEP's Division of Technology, Industry and Economics. An economist, Mr. Eaton concentrates on research and analytics within the Green Economy Initiative, including indicators, metrics, and tracking green economy developments. At the moment, he is working with other members of the ETB team on the Green Economy Report, to be released later this year.

Mr. Eaton is expecting to complete his PhD with Wageningen University in 2010, based on a series of articles on the economics of innovation and intellectual property rights over genetic resources. He holds an MSc degree in Environmental Economics (University College London, University of London), a diploma in International Development Co-operation (University of Ottawa), and a BSc in Economics, Quantitative Methods (University of Toronto).

In the Freiburg Forum 2011, Mr. Eaton will talk about the UNEP report “Green Economy Success Stories”, which builds on the encouraging signs and results of many initiatives around the world. A number of these come from developing countries including emerging economies, and illustrate the positive benefits from specific green investments and policies, that if scaled up and integrated into a comprehensive strategy, could offer an alternative development path, one that is pro-growth, pro-jobs and pro-poor.  The report underlines that a green economy strategy has established and proven examples on which to build. At the same time, some recent developments also illustrate the growing interest in seizing opportunities to move to a green economy.

Thorsten Pinkepank

Thorsten Pinkepank is head of Sustainability Coordination at BASF. After completing his education in business administration and studying journalism, political science and psychology, he helped in establishing a political and business consulting institute. There he developed and  moderated projects on sustainability issues on national and local levels for business and politics. In 2002, he moved to BASF and has held various positions in political communications. Most recently, he headed the HR communications unit before taking over responsibility for BASF's Sustainability Coordination in 2010.

Workshops

Change Management workshop with Benjamin Kafka.

Benjamin Kafka studied Political Science, Anthropology and Economics in Freiburg, and completed his MA in International and Development Economics at the University of Sussex at Brighton, focusing on issues such as power and participation, governance of value chains, local and regional development and measurement of poverty and vulnerability. For the past five years he has worked in “international development”, first in Bosnia and Herzegovina, then in Burkina Faso, concentrating on local development and agricultural value chains. Next to this, he has regularly worked as a facilitator of global education seminars and workshops. In September 2010 he co-founded imPULS, Agentur für angewandte Utopien as an attempt to be part of a solution, rather than part of the problem. 

The Workshop „A Do It Yourself Kit for Realising Utopian Ideas“ will not take much time analysing problems. This has been done, and is largely uncontested. We also know that any solution must take into account the complexity of our world and cannot stay rooted in linear thinking of past centuries.

But what does this mean in practice? And why is so little happening in spite of the scale and urgency of the problems? The German writer Harald Welzer speaks of the “inertia of mental infrastructures”, that prevents us from changing our collective behaviours. Looking at the role of cars in our society, he comes to following conclusion: “I am the problem”.

Therefore, the workshop starts with ourselves. What is our own vision for a future society? What is our image of how change happens? What images and ideas do we have that can guide and motivate us to reach this vision?

Secondly we will ask how we can actively and positively influence these change processes. How can our “theory of change” help us work towards our vision? We will introduce and apply different approaches to shape our future, amongst others “Theory U” (Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer et al.) that can contribute to meaningful conversations (Margaret Wheatley, Art of Hosting) and intersectoral dialogue.

Panel Discussion