Jonas Rüffer

From June 18-20, 2021, a workshop on climate activism and public relations was held for the winners of the climate neutrality competition of the EUKI Three4Climate project. The 6 winners from Germany met in Berlin and took part in various activities such as a consumer-critical bike tour or a workshop with the Federal Agency for Civic Education. The focus was also on exchanging ideas with other climate protection activists. For example, the winners were able to exchange ideas with Fridays for Future activists from Berlin. In the evening, everyone was able to take part in the short film event “Floating Cinema” from a pedal boat on the Spree. On the last day, the students talked to a journalist about their experiences in climate protection, took press photos and made a film in the Sandgrube nature reserve in Jagen 86 of the Grunewald forest. At 34 degrees, a short dip in the Teufelssee was of course a must. At the same time, students from Portugal and Slovenia also met up. The winners in Slovenia spent the weekend in the Rakov Škocjan valley at Lake Cerknica, one of the largest lakes that disappears completely in the dry season. There they explored caves and went cycling. The students in Portugal went to Arrábida National Park near Lisbon and spent an action-packed weekend climbing in the great outdoors. Of course, networking between the three countries was not to be neglected. That’s why everyone got together on Saturday evening for the award ceremony in an online meeting. The winners were congratulated by Caterina Salb from the BMU and Linda Beyschlag from Guidehouse and motivated for further projects. The students also presented their projects to each other and discussed climate protection activities at their schools.

UfU has moved. Although the address remains the same, we are now in new, even larger offices in the House of Democracy and Human Rights. For UfU, this move is also an investment in the future in times of corona and working from home. We are growing steadily and if we believe that working from home will continue to be an issue after the pandemic, we want to give our employees the opportunity to work in the office in the future. UfU is now located in the middle and rear building on the fourth floor, bringing two previously separate parts of the institute back together. We are still busy unpacking some of the boxes, but are already looking forward to welcoming visitors to the institute.

Energy saving goes digital – Hanover school exchange and CO2 traffic light workshop on “Ventilation in times of corona”

Despite coronavirus and the resulting lack of opportunities to hold events in person, the Energy Efficiency and Energy Transition department has remained in contact with “its” schools as the school year draws to a close. Cross-school events such as the annual exchange meeting in the GSE energy-saving project (organized by the City of Hanover’s Building Management Department) and a workshop on building your own CO2 traffic lights have taken place online in recent months.

The school exchange on April 27 for Hanover schools focused on how energy can be saved even in times of continuous ventilation due to the pandemic. Corona in particular has given rise to new requirements that also have an impact on energy consumption. In addition to two exchange rounds, one with a pedagogical focus and one with a technical focus, the participating teachers listened to a presentation on “Aerosols, air exchange, window ventilation and CO2 values as a measurable point of reference for orientation”, in which the question of how the virus can be dangerous in schools and how the risk of infection can be minimized was explored. As part of the support for the committed energy savers, the schools were also offered a new event in the energy-saving project in addition to the offer to borrow CO2 traffic lights from the school authorities: the self-construction of CO2 measuring devices with a small group of pupils. On June 1, a CO2 traffic light workshop took place as part of the GSE project in cooperation with the building management department of the state capital of Hanover under the direction of Ms. Schacknat (engineer and school supervisor at UfU). Especially during the corona pandemic, there is great interest in schools in proper ventilation, and the self-built CO2 traffic lights are intended to support this and at the same time awaken the pupils’ spirit of research with this exciting STEM project. All 12 schools received the materials and assembly instructions by post in advance, as the workshop took place online due to the coronavirus. After initially having to solve technical problems, the components were quickly assembled by all groups and the programming could begin. The applications and algorithms required for this could be clicked together in a graphical user interface without any programming knowledge. The students created the individual modules with the support of their teachers on site. The first task was to show the display, the CO2 value and the temperature. Once everyone had succeeded in doing this, the LED was to light up in the appropriate color according to the CO2 content of the room air: the LED was to light up green at a value below 1000 ppm (parts per million), yellow up to 1,500 ppm and red above 1,500 ppm. In this way, a critical CO2 value can be immediately recognized and ventilated during subsequent use in the classroom. In addition, the CO2 traffic lights could optionally be connected to the WLAN so that the values could be called up graphically on an external website. Great traffic lights were created for use in times of corona, for which stylish housings were then creatively developed and built. Due to the many positive responses and other interested schools and groups of pupils, further CO2 traffic light self-construction workshops are planned for the new school year.

On 24 March 2021, the Independent Institute for Environmental Issues e.V. – UfU – and the University of Coimbra organised the fourth digital Aarhus Workshop to discuss public participation and access to justice at European Union level. While UfU hosted and moderated the fourth Aarhus Workshop, Ms. Dr. Alexandra Aragão, who is a reknown Portuguese Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Coimbra, teaching environmental law, European law, risk governance and food security law, enriched the event with her well-founded and substantial presentations and contributions.

More than 20 Aarhus-interested participants from environmental associations, foundations, universities, governmental organisations as well as legal professionals took part in the fourth digital Aarhus Workshop. Most participants came from Germany, Portugal and Slovenia, those three countries, who are together holding the EU Trio Council Presidency in 2020 and 2021. On 1 January 2021, Portugal took over the EU Council Presidency from Germany and it will soon be handed over to Slovenia.

At the beginning of the Workshop, Dr. Catarina Grilo, Director of Conservation & Policy at ANP in association with WWF Portugal, delivered some insights on the Portuguese Presidency of the Council. After Catarina’s sharp observations on Portugal’s achievements in strengthening European environmental law and environmental democracy, Sebastian Bechtel, LLM, environmental democracy lawyer at ClientEarth Brussels, provided a captivating presentation on the new developments around the Amendment of the European Aarhus Regulation. The short presentation on access to justice included the advice of the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee in ACCC/M/2017/3 of 12 February 2021 and the findings of the Committee in ACCC/C/2015/128 (European Union) of 17 March 2021. He talked about the current legislative procedure and how environmental NGOs and other stakeholder participate in it.

After a short break the main focus of the Workshop laid on two questions: “How can citizens & NGOs participate in European environmental decision-making?” and “How can electronic public participation in European environmental decision-making be strengthened?” First, Prof Dr. Alexandra Aragão gave an overview of the multifaceted public participation opportunities in Europe, e.g. the Eurobarometer, public consultations, legislative initiatives or citizen science. After the systematic presentation of central reactive and pro active participation options for European citizens and environmental NGOs by Ms. Aragão, a Panel discussion on online public consultations, who are conducted by the European Commission, followed. Part of the multi-stakeholder panel discussion were a legal scholar, two environmental NGO experts and one participation expert respectively:

• Prof. Dr. Maria Alexandra de Sousa Aragão,
• Rebecca Humphries, Senior Public Affairs Officer at WWF European Policy Office (EPO)
• Dr. Raphael Weyland, Head of Brussels Office at Nature & Bio-diversity Conservation Union (NABU) in association with BirdLife Europe, as well as
• Anna Renkamp, Senior Project Manager Bertelsmann Stiftung.

The main arguments of all panellists during the fruitful discussions are captured in the Presentation to our fourth Aarhus Workshop

After the panel discussion some time was left to discuss the pressing question where and how citizens and NGO representatives could complain if they could not participate effectively online.

Due to the limited time available to discuss the online public consultations conducted by the European Commission, UfU and the University of Coimbra agreed to prepare a discussion paper on strengthened E-participation in European environmental decision-making.

The next and final fifth Aarhus Workshop on 7. September 2021 will fall under the EU Council Presidency by Slovenia. It will be held shortly before the seventh session of the Meeting of the Parties of the Aarhus Convention (MoP 7) from 18. to 21. October 2021. If you want to join the fifth Aarhus Workshop, please register here: https://www.ufu.de/en/5-aarhus-workshop/.

All five Aarhus Workshops are part of the project “European Implementation of the Aarhus Convention in the Digital Age (EU-AarKo)” of the Independent Institute for Environmental Issues ­ UfU e.V. This project is financially supported by the German Environment Agency (UBA) and the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety within the framework of the sponsorship of environmental associations.

For more information about this project and its background, click here.

For any questions, please contact Kathleen Pauleweit: kathleen.pauleweit@ufu.de