Published: “Annual Report 2009-2010” of the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE)

Press Release of 15 December 2010

Today, the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) has published its Annual Report 2009 - 2010. The UN-Summit on the Millennium Development Goals in New York, the Conference on Biological Diversity in Nagoya and the Climate Conferences in Copenhagen and Cancún have been the international highlights of the development policy calendar 2009/2010. One aspect has become very clear in all these fora: the global challenges of the future – the struggle against poverty and starvation; climate change and the transformation of the global energy system towards a low-carbon economy; security; and overcoming the financial crisis – will only be resolved in close cooperation with developing and newly industrialised countries.

“It is the global issues of the future that will shape the 21st century” according to Dirk Messner and Imme Scholz. Furthermore, “only if international cooperation succeeds will it be possible to capitalise on the many opportunities globalisation offers – otherwise crises will multiply across the world at ever greater speed via global chains of interdependence”. In the past decades the well-known North-South-patterns have been breaking up quickly. As a consequence, development cooperation has to free itself of its “aid image” and the focus must be on common interests and cooperation at eye level.

In recent years the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) expanded its global research and consulting networks and forged new partnerships. As founding member of the “European Think Tanks Group” DIE is able to pool European knowledge for German and European development policy. Within the “Global Governance Research Network” DIE is cooperating closely with international partners to support the G20 discussions on global development policy issues.