Germany’s global partners. Who should the next federal government co-operate with on sustainability?

Grimm, Sven / Wulf Reiners
The Current Column (2021)

German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), The Current Column of 10 June 2021

”Future-oriented policy invests in the development of multilateral standards and regulations and focuses on multilateral co-operation, further supported and flanked by bilateral and European co-operation.” In their column on the 2021 Bundestag elections Anna-Katharina Hornidge and Imme Scholz emphasise the importance of international collaboration aimed at the global common good. What partners does Germany need, and what partners need Germany in order to tackle the global challenges of the 2020s?

Germany is not the only country faced with managing course-setting issues concerning the future: the manner in which we do business, consume and are mobile needs to take planetary limits into account. Major challenges such as climate change or the COVID-19 pandemic can only be tackled using approaches agreed beyond national and political boundaries. The German government also stresses global interdependencies and the necessity of co-operation in its White paper on German multilateralism (May 2021).

Independent of party-political considerations, the need for joint action at global level as well as with central bilateral partners is set to increase further in the coming legislature period.

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