Heffa Schücking

Heffa Schücking (* 1959 ) is a German biologist and environmental activist. For the work with her environmental organization Urgewald Schücking received several environmental prizes, including the 1994 Goldman Environmental Prize .

Political work and activism

Heffa Schücking is best known for her influence on environmental policy . With the Rainforest Memorandum , which she prepared in 1988, she exposed the connection between consumption in northern industrialized countries and the destruction of the tropical rainforest. In the memorandum she documented Germany's responsibility for the destruction of the rainforest and campaigned for an end to the destructive actions in the primary forest (primeval forest) through German funding. Today more than 1200 local agencies in Germany have implemented one or more of the requirements of the memorandum and have also abolished the use of tropical wood in the construction of city projects.

An important part of her work was to support people who are directly affected by the destruction of the jungle and their land rights in relation to destructive development projects. Their lobbying prompted the German government to end many projects of this kind or to improve them adequately. In addition, their commitment led to a changed public attitude towards German development policy.

In 1992 Schücking founded Urgewald, a small organization that on the one hand questions the common development model and on the other hand offers practical support to local communities in the Global South who are fighting against destructive projects. Urgewald celebrated a great success when it succeeded in stopping a major project to build a large dam in the Aru Valley . The Aru Valley is one of the last ecologically intact Himalayan valleys in Nepal . The commitment of Schücking and her colleagues led to Germany withdrawing from the project, the World Bank to follow suit, and in this way the project did not materialize. In addition to working to reform German development policy, Urgewald has begun to control subsidies that the German government awards to projects in the private sector.

In 1997 Schücking and her colleagues played a key role in setting up a major campaign to reform the issuing of German export credit insurance ( Hermes cover ). This campaign was supported by 140 German NGOs and a total of more than a million people and campaigned for the establishment and compliance with strict environmental and social standards in this area.

Schücking is also active in the field of non-governmental education: in 1998 she organized the first international NGO workshop on export credits and insurance and helped to found an international movement that raised awareness of the rights of local communities and the environment through export and investment subsidies .

Currently, Schücking and Urgewald are concentrating on organizing grassroots activism to convince commercial banks to stop funding coal mines in Colombia, India and the Appalachian region in the US. Heffa Schücking was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1994 for her entire environmental commitment and was named electricity rebel of the year in 2017 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} www.goldmanprize.com: Heffa Schücking - 1994 Goldman Prize Recipient , accessed on July 18, 2014.
2. ↑ “Success story with a role model” In: Neue Rottweiler Zeitung. 11th July 2017.