Issue 17: June 2002

New Bonn training centre to study
environment and human security

A new UN University research and training centre on Environment and Human Security (UNU/EHS) will begin operations January 1 next year. The centre, located in Bonn, will study the connection between environment change and human activities and conditions.

Uwe Thomas

The new centre was announced at a press conference in Bonn May 27 by the German Federal Secretary of State for Education and Science, Uwe Thomas, UNU Rector Hans van Ginkel, the Minister for Education, Science and Research of the State of North Rhine Westphalia, Gabriele Behler, and the Mayor of Bonn, Bärbel Dieckmann.

In its interdisciplinary research, capacity building and dissemination activities UNU/EHS will emphasize “creeping” disasters as opposed to extreme natural events, and will concentrate on the consequences of societal and cultural vulnerability to natural disasters and on ways to reduce this vulnerability.

“The institute aims to provide actors in policy-making, administration and civil society with the knowledge to react more efficiently to environmental change, and to prevent negative effects of human action on the environment in the future,” said van Ginkel.

The Federal and State governments will jointly provide 1 million euros annually for five years to support the establishment of the institute and efforts will be made to set up an endowment fund for future funding.

Federal, state and city government representatives stressed the relevance of UNU/EHS to the academic and policy communities in Germany: “There is no doubt that the establishment of the first UNU Research and Training Centre in Germany is particularly important for the science and research community in the region of North Rhine Westphalia,” said Behler.

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