Monika Griefahn | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Minister of the Environment of Lower Saxony | |
In office 21 June 1990 –30 March 1998 | |
Minister-President | Gerhard Schröder |
Preceded by | Werner Remmers |
Succeeded by | Wolfgang Jüttner |
Member of the Bundestag for Soltau-Fallingbostel –Winsen L. (Harburg;1998–2005) | |
In office 26 October 1998 – 27 October 2009 | |
Preceded by | Rudolf Meyer |
Succeeded by | Michael Grosse-Brömer (Harburg) |
Member of the Landtag of Lower Saxony for Hildesheim | |
In office 23 June 1994 – 30 March 1998 | |
Preceded by | Leonore Auerbach |
Succeeded by | Elisabeth Conrady |
Personal details | |
Born | Monika Griefahn 3 October 1954 Mülheim an der Ruhr,West Germany |
Political party | Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) |
Occupation | Politician,activist |
Known for | Co-founder of Greenpeace Germany and member of the SPD |
Monika Griefahn (born 3 October 1954) is a German politician and one of the co-founders of Greenpeace. She is a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD).
Griefahn was a Member of the German Bundestag (1998–2009),serving as an expert on cultural affairs and media as well as foreign (cultural) policy. From 1990 to 1998 she was the State Minister of the Environment in the State of Lower Saxony. From 1980 to 1990 she was an activist in the environmental organization Greenpeace and the first woman on the international board of Greenpeace (1984–1990).
After finishing school in 1973 Griefahn went to the universities of Göttingen and Hamburg to study mathematics and social sciences. She left university in 1979 with a diploma in sociology. 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 in establishing Greenpeace in Germany,with its main office in Hamburg. She was the executive director until 1983. With Greenpeace Germany she organized campaigns against,among other environmental issues,chemical pollution as well as campaigns for the protection of the North Seas and the rivers Rhine and Elbe. In 1984 she became the first female member of the international board of Greenpeace. She was responsible for developing programs and skill training for the people working for Greenpeace all over the world until 1990. Additionally she helped found new offices in Austria,Belgium,Switzerland,Latin America and the former Soviet Union.
In 1992,Griefahn joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD) Germany.
In 1990 Minister-President Gerhard Schröder of Lower Saxony named her as the Minister for the Environment,where she started special programs to support renewable energy systems (wind power,solar,biomass) in order to stop the use of nuclear power (more see "Public Offices"). She was in his first and in his second cabinet. One of her central concerns in environmental policy was to quit to the use of nuclear energy. Her plans,which finally became reality in 2011 (after the Fukushima nuclear accident),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-fund and an atlas for wind energy. Her commitment contributed to the fact that the plans to phase out nuclear power [ broken anchor ] became a reality between 1998 and 2005,when a coalition of the Social Democratic Party and the Greens led the Federal Government (First ans Second Schröder cabinet). In 2001 the law on the abandonment of nuclear energy came into effect.
As State Minister of the Environment,Griefahn initiated new policies on waste management. Waste had usually been stored on disposal sites or burnt in incineration plants. Griefahn put her focus on products which could more easily been disassembled,on the separation of different waste types and on different waste treatments –such as composting or mechanical separation. Consequently,there was no longer a need to build about ten incineration plants,which had been planned before her time of office.
Additionally she changed procurement directives for public offices in Lower Saxony in such a way as to make them become more ecological. She founded two national parks –Harz and Elbtalaue (biosphere reserve).
After the 1994 Lower Saxony state election on 13 March 1994,Griefahn became a member of the Landtag of Lower Saxony.
From 1998 to 2009 Griefahn was a Member of the Bundestag. From 1998 to 2005,SPD and Grüne formed the first red-green coalition on federal level (first Schröder cabinet and Second Schröder cabinet) and served as chair of the Committee on Cultural Affairs and Media from July 2000 to September 2005. From 1999 to 2000 and then from 2005 to 2009,she was also the spokesperson for the parliamentary group of the SPD for the Committee on Cultural Affairs and Media as well as for the Sub-Committee on Cultural Policy Abroad. Furthermore,she was a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs (Auswärtiger Ausschuss) and of the Sub-committees on Cultural Policy Abroad and New Media.
Responsible for cultural policy,Griefahn initiated the founding of the German Games Award. She was also committed to the support of German films,strong copyright laws,and a decentralized structure of the book trade market by initiating a fixed bookprice law,cultural diversity and the expansion of Goethe-Institutes and German Schools abroad.
In 2005 Griefahn was elected chair of the bilateral committee on cultural diversity,which was appointed by the Bundestag and the French Assemblée Nationale.
In foreign policy her work focused on supporting renewable energy 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.
In addition to her committee assignments,Griefahn served as deputy chair of the German-French Parliamentary Friendship Group from 2006 until 2009.
From 2015 until 2016,Griefahn served on a government-appointed commission tasked with recommending how to safeguard the funding of fulfilling Germany's exit from nuclear energy,under the leadership of co-chairs Ole von Beust,Matthias Platzeck and Jürgen Trittin. [1] [2]
In 2020,Griefahn became the SPD candidate for lord mayor of Mülheim an der Ruhr; [3] she eventually lost against the Christian Democrat's candidate Marc Buchholz. [4]
Since 1986 Griefahn has been volunteering for the Right Livelihood Award Foundation. She has been a member of both the jury and the board. In 2010 she was appointed co-chair alongside Jakob von Uexküll. In 2008 she became a member of the presidency of the German "Kirchentag",a biennial national festival for Protestants. Moreover,she is jury-chair of a national festival on ecological and nature films ("Ökofilmtour").
Additional activities include:
Griefahn is married to 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.
Alliance 90/The Greens, often simply referred to as Greens, is a green political party in Germany. It was formed in 1993 by the merger of the Greens and Alliance 90. The Greens had itself merged with the East German Green Party after German reunification in 1990.
Jürgen Trittin is a German Green politician who served as Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety in the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder from 1998 to 2005.
Joseph Leinen is a German politician who served as Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 1999 until 2019. He is a member of the Social Democratic Party, part of the Party of European Socialists.
Matthias Platzeck is a German politician. He was Minister President of Brandenburg from 2002 to 2013 and party chairman of the SPD from November 2005 to April 2006.
Georg Milbradt is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as Minister-President of Saxony from 2002 to 2008.
Michael Braungart is a German chemist who advocates that humans can make a positive instead of a negative environmental impact by redesigning industrial production and therefore that dissipation is not waste. A former Greenpeace activist who once lived in a tree as protest, he is now considered to be a visionary environmental thinker.
Stephan Weil is a German politician and the leader of the Social Democratic Party in Lower Saxony. On 20 January 2013, the SPD and the Green party won the 2013 Lower Saxony state election by one seat. On 19 February 2013, he was elected Minister President of Lower Saxony with the votes of SPD and Alliance '90/The Greens. From 1 November 2013 until 31 October 2014 he was President of the Bundesrat and ex officio deputy to the President of Germany. In November 2017, he was again elected Minister President with the votes of SPD and CDU.
Hubert Dietmar Woidke is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Since August 2013, Woidke has served as Minister President of Brandenburg.
Barbara Anne Hendricks is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who served as Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2013 until 2018.
Michael Fuchs was a German politician who served in the Bundestag from 2002 to 2017. He was elected European deputy chairman of the Trilateral Commission in 2010.
Nina Scheer is a German lawyer and politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who has been a member of the Bundestag since 2013. Her political interests include energy policy and climate change. In 2019, Scheer was an unsuccessful candidate in the 2019 Social Democratic Party of Germany leadership election, in a team with Karl Lauterbach. Her father was Hermann Scheer, also a SPD Bundestag member.
Ute Vogt is a German lawyer and politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who served as a member of the Bundestag from 1994 to 2005 and from 2009 to 2021. Since 2021, she has been serving as president of the German Life Saving Association (DLRG).
Gero Clemens Hocker is a German economist and politician of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) who has been serving as a member of the Bundestag from the state of Lower Saxony since 2017.
Steffi Lemke is a German politician of Alliance 90/The Greens who has been serving as Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety, and Consumer Protection in Chancellor Olaf Scholz's cabinet since 2021.
Cansel Kiziltepe is a German economist and politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who has been serving as State Minister (Senator) for Labour, Social Affairs, Equality, Integration, Diversity and Anti-Discrimination in the government of Governing Mayor Kai Wegner since 2023.
Carsten Träger is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who has served as a member of the Bundestag from the state of Bavaria since 2013.
Bernd Westphal is a German trade unionist and politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who has been serving as a member of the Bundestag from the state of Lower Saxony since 2013.
Georg Nüßlein is a German politician who served as a member of the Bundestag from the state of Bavaria from 2002 until 2021. From 1987 until 2021, he was a member of the Christian Social Union (CSU). He left the party in the wake of his loss of immunity and allegations of corruption related to the procurement of FFP2 masks ("Maskenaffäre").
Carola Reimann is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who served as State Minister for Social Affairs, Health, and Equality in the cabinet of Minister-President Stephan Weil of Lower Saxony from 2017 to 2021. She previously represented Braunschweig in the Bundestag from 2002 until 2017.
Susanne Kathrin Michel is a German trade unionist and politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who has been a Member of the German Bundestag for Saxony since 2021.