Environmental and Resource Protection

Natural resources are growing ever scarcer the world over. Increasing numbers of people have to share increasingly less. Potable water is particularly critical, but so are raw materials such as coal, natural gas, oil, and minerals important to industrial production. Continuing destruction of the environment, often through mining and oil production but also from non-environmentally conscious farming methods, is exacerbating the problem. The diversity of life on our planet is also under siege. More and more plants and animals are faced with the irreversible fact of extinction. Yet biodiversity is essential to the stability of the ecosystems – and as such essential to the survival of mankind. Our well-being depends on the ecosystem in its diversity, which must be protected. No single nation can achieve this alone. In 1992, 179 countries adopted Agenda 21 at the United Nation’s conference for Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. This agenda clearly states that only a worldwide communal effort can ensure that the most basic needs are met, that living conditions for all the earth’s inhabitants improve, that our ecosystems enjoy better protection and improved management and a secure and fruitful future. It notes that a global partnership is needed to this end, one aimed at sustainable development. Environmental and resource protection has already shown us quite clearly that the action radius and effect of national and regional environmental policies are limited.

Stopping environmental destruction and developing sustainable environmental protection requires strong institutions active on regional, national and international levels, institutions with the political will and ability to operate in keeping with the principles of good governance. German development policy works to improve living and environmental conditions in its partner countries. Inwent is an important contributor here, providing representatives from organisations and institutions with the knowledge and skills they need. Our professional education programmes are directed at political decision makers, environmental jurists, and company managers in particular. Our "Environmental Management in Arabic Countries" programme, for example, is designed to introduce better environmental management programmes to the countries in the region. Industrial environmental pollution is a serious problem in large cities in particular. Inwent trains both experts from government authorities and companies and information multipliers. They learn to apply the relevant corporate instruments and modern industrial environmental policy in our practice-oriented training and advising programmes.

Sustainable environmental protection tops the agenda of Inwent’s programmes in India as well. Rapid growth of the economy and the population is placing great demands on the environment. Inwent offers the "Environmental Planning and Energy Efficiency in India" programme to improve long-term environmental management. It teaches methods of human resource and organisation development on a national and state level. The programme is in cooperation with the Indian Ministry for the Environment and the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) in Delhi and qualifies experts and executives from Indian environmental agencies and power authorities, cooperating institutions, organisations, and private business.

Information on the Rio Conference from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development 

Bureau of Energy Efficiency  

D+C online: EU neighbourhood - Conservation challenge