- Monika Griefahn
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Monika Griefahn.
Monika Griefahn (born 3 October 1954 in Muelheim-Ruhr, Germany) is co-founder of Greenpeace Germany and a German politician of the SPD .
She was Member of the German Parliament (1998-2009), functioning as expert on culture and the media as well as foreign (cultural) policy. From 1990 to 1998 she was Minister of the Environment in the State of Lower Saxony. From 1980 to 1990 she was activist in the environmental organization Greenpeace and the first woman on the international board of Greenpeace (1984-1990).
Contents
Life and Work
After finishing school in 1973 she went to the universities Göttingen and Hamburg to study mathematics and social sciences. She left university in 1979 with a diploma in sociology. Already starting in 1973 she worked for the German-French Youth Organization and for YMCA Hamburg, offering adult education seminars for trade unions, church organizations and NGOs for more than a decade.
From 1980 onwards she became active to establish Greenpeace in Germany, with its main office in Hamburg. She was executive director until 1983. With Greenpeace Germany she organized campaigns against - among other environmental issues - chemical pollution and for the protection of the North Seas and the rivers Rhine and Elbe. In 1984 she became, as very first woman, a member of the international board of Greenpeace. Until 1990 she was responsible for developing programs and skill training for the people working for Greenpeace all over the world. Additionally she helped founding new offices in Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Latin America and the former Soviet Union.
In 1990 the later German chancellor Gerhard Schröder named her as Minister for the Environment in the state of Lower Saxony, where she started special programs to support removable energy systems (wind, solar, biomass) to stop nuclear power (more see “Public Offices”). After that she became Member of Parliament in 1998 (see chapter “Public Offices” and “Member of Parliament”).
Monika Griefahn is married to Prof. Dr. Michael Braungart, an environmental chemist and professor of process engineering, who developed – in cooperation with the American architect William McDonough – the Cradle to Cradle design principle. Griefahn and Braungart have three children.
Party
Monika Griefahn joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD) Germany in 1992.
Member of Parliament
From 1994 to 1998 she was Member of the state parliament of Lower Saxony.
From 1998 to 2009 she was Member of the German Parliament ("Bundestag") and served as chair of the committee on culture and the media from July 2000 to September 2005. From 1999 to 2000 and from 2005 to 2009 she was spokesperson of the parliamentary group of the SPD for the committee on culture and the media and for the sub-committee on cultural policy abroad. Furthermore she was member of the committee on foreign affairs and of the sub-committees on cultural policy abroad and new media.
Responsible for cultural policy she decisively initiated the founding of the German Games Award. She was also committed to the support of German films, a strong copyright, a decentralized structure of the book trade market by initiating a fix bookprize law, cultural diversity and the expansion of Goethe-Institutes and German School abroad.
2005 she was elected chair of the bilateral committee on cultural diversity, which was appointed by the German Parliament and the French Assemblée Nationale.
In foreign policy her work focused on supporting renewable energy spreading in German real estate all around the world (like German schools for example) as well as on the support of NGOs in the field of nature conservation and environmental protection. She was active in the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and the OECD for these issues.
Public Offices
From 1990 to 1998 Monika Griefahn was Minister of the Environment of the state of Lower Saxony, which at that time was led by Gerhard Schröder, who became German chancellor later on. One of her central concerns in environmental policy was to quit nuclear energy. Her plans – which finally became reality in 2011 – in those days were blocked by directives of the Federal Ministry of the Environment, headed by Klaus Töpfer (1990-1994) and Angela Merkel (1994-1998). Parallel to her commitment against nuclear power Griefahn hurried along the extension of renewable energy in Lower Saxony with measures like an eco-fonds or an atlas for wind energy. Her commitment contributed to the fact that the plans to phase out nuclear power became real between 1998 and 2005, when a coalition of the Social Democratic Party and the Greens led the Federal Government. In 2001 the law on the abandonment of nuclear energy came into power.
As Minister of the Environment Griefahn initiated new ways in waste policy. Waste had usually been stored on disposal sites or burnt in incinerating plants up to then. Griefahn put her focus on products which could more easily been disassembled, on the separation of different waste types and on different waste treatments – like composting or mechanical separation. Consequently there was no need any more to build about ten incinerating plants, which had been planned before her period of office.
Additionally she changed procurement directives for public offices in Lower Saxony in a way that they became more ecological. In nature conservation she founded two national parks - Harz and Elbtalaue (biosphere reserve). She also took the acknowledgement of the Wadden Sea of the North Sea at the UNESCO some big steps further (“Man and Biosphere”-Program).
Voluntary Commitment
Since 1986 Monika Griefahn has been working voluntarily for the Right Livelihood Award Foundation in Sweden (“Alternative Nobel Price”). She has been member of jury and board. In 2010 she was appointed co-chair aside from Jakob von Uexküll. Griefahn is member of the German UNESCO-commission and vice-chair of the F.C.-Flick Foundation against xenophobia, racism and intolerance. In 2008 she became member of the presidency of the German “Kirchentag”, a biennial national festival of Protestants. Moreover she is jury-chair of a national festival on ecological and nature films (Ökofilmtour”).
On a local level she started an initiative against right wing extremism in 2001 which has helped to enlighten the structures of right wing sub-culture and its danger to civil society. Since then more and more people have become active in that field.
Selected Publications (German)
Computerspiele als Kulturgut? In: S. Ganguin, B. Hoffmann (Hrsg.): Digitale Spielkultur. Kopaed Verlag, München 2010, ISBN 978-3-86736-343-3.
Kulturwirtschaft und kulturelle Intelligenz. In: B. Wagner: Jahrbuch für Kulturpolitik 2008. Thema: Kulturwirtschaft und kreative Stadt. Bonn/Essen, S. 221-226.
Kreativität – ein Wirtschaftsfaktor? In: Kulturforum der Sozialdemokratie (Hrsg.): Kulturnotizen. 11/2006, Berlin.
Nachhaltigkeitspolitik und Kulturpolitik. In: Kulturpolitische Gesellschaft KuPoGe (Hrsg.): Kulturpolitische Mitteilungen. II/2002, Bonn.
Nachhaltigkeitspolitik und Kulturpolitik – eine Verbindung mit Zukunft? In: H. Kurt, B. Wagner (Hrsg.): Kultur-Kunst-Nachhaltigkeit. Die Bedeutung von Kultur für das Leitbild Nachhaltige Entwicklung. Bonn/Essen, 2002, S. 59-68.
(Hrsg.): Greenpeace. Wir kämpfen für eine Umwelt, in der wir leben können. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1983, ISBN 3-498-02434-5.
Weil ich ein Lied hab'. Die Politik einer Umweltministerin. Piper, München 1994, ISBN 3-492-03688-0.
Selected Speeches (English)
26.10.2010: “Necessary political framework conditions for sustainable building and social effects”, speech delivered at Carleton University, Ottawa.
15.10.2007: „The cultural dimension of environmentalism“; Talk delivered at Harvard University, Massachusetts, USA.
29.04.2007: “Global warming: ten years after Kyoto”; Speech for the 116th IPU Assembly in Bali.
Literature
Jürgen Streich: Monika Griefahn. Politik, Positionen, Perspektiven. Zebulon, Köln 1997, ISBN 3-928679-60-0
References
- Monika Griefahn's official vita on www.monika-griefahn.de
- Monika Griefahn’s archives of her work in the German Parliament www.monika-griefahn.de
Categories:- 1954 births
- Living people
- People from Mülheim
- Social Democratic Party of Germany politicians
- Members of the Bundestag
- German women in politics
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