In August 2014, the Heinrich Boell Foundation convened a Winter School with civil society representatives from various African countries to deliberate and to develop a common understanding of what the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action means for Africa and what it needs to deliver in order to respond to Africa’s priorities and challenges in the context of climate change.
We are using the world’s soils as if they were inexhaustible, continually withdrawing from an account, but never paying in. At the start of the International Year of Soils 2015, the Soil Atlas - Facts and Figures about Earth, Land and Fields – demonstrate why the protection of soil is important to us all.
The aim of this report is to support the debates in climate finance by providing insights into the processes of programming climate finance domestically in Africa.
This report is a follow-up to the preliminary report produced by the Women’s Trust (TWT) and the Research and Advocacy Unit (RAU) in early 2014 on the effectiveness of the SiMuka! Zimbabwe, Woman, Get Counted! Register to Vote! in getting women to register to vote and to vote. This report goes further to note that whilst it is encouraging to see women turn out to vote in elections, and even more gratifying to see that the turn out can be strongly increased by woman to woman advocacy, there is always need to conduct a reality check on the actual process of the election and its outcome. This report investigates whether what happened before, during and after the elections affects women’s views of the elections and whether this differs for women in urban areas as for women in rural areas.
For this edition of Perspectives the Heinrich Böll Foundation asked a number of African intellectuals, writers and analysts to provide their take on Africa’s relationship with Europe. The result is a small collection of interviews, short essays and comments that throw light on the complexities and complexes of this relationship, using analysis, imagery, experience, provocation and humour.
The value of nature and its “services” should not only be cherished and given greater visibility as elements of the economy, but should be assigned a monetary value in order to protect them. That is the new mantra. Although the idea is becoming more popular it is also highly contentious, argues Barbara Unmüßig.
For this edition of Perspectives, the Heinrich Böll Foundation offered Africa-based thinkers and commentators an opportunity to critically reflect on what a “transition towards sustainability” means or should mean for the region. The articles gathered here go beyond ideological debates to also provide some case studies where green-economy principles have been applied.
This review of the national budget for 2014, as delivered by finance minister Pravin Gordhan on 26 February 2014, gauges the extent to which government invests in what it has identified as priorities for the country and assesses the impact of government spending choices for the 2014/15 financial on women.
How could a just and democratic resource politics look like that respects both planetary boundaries and human rights? The Memorandum “Resource Politics for a Fair Future” is the outcome of a two-year international dialogue process of the Heinrich Böll Foundation.
The Heinrich Boll Foundation Southern Africa, working with Inter Press Services (IPS) Africa has published a handbook for journalists titled Climate Governance in Africa. The handbook covers key tools for journalists who want to report on climate governance on the African continent and provides a succinct overview of the governance issues the continent has to contend with
