Monika Griefahn | |
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| 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 theBundestag forSoltau-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 theLandtag of Lower Saxony forHildesheim | |
| In office 23 June 1994 – 30 March 1998 | |
| Preceded by | Leonore Auerbach |
| Succeeded by | Elisabeth Conrady |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Monika Griefahn (1954-10-03)3 October 1954 (age 70) Mülheim an der Ruhr,West Germany |
| Political party | Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) |
| Occupation | Politician, activist |
| Known for | Co-founder ofGreenpeace Germany and member of the SPD |
Monika Griefahn (born 3 October 1954) is a German politician and one of the co-founders ofGreenpeace. She is a member of theSocial Democratic Party (SPD).
Griefahn was aMember 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 ofGöttingen andHamburg 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 forYMCA Hamburg, offering adult education seminars for trade unions, church organizations andNGOs 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 riversRhine andElbe. 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 theSocial Democratic Party (SPD) Germany.
In 1990 Minister-PresidentGerhard Schröder of Lower Saxony named her as the Minister for the Environment, where she started special programs to supportrenewable energy systems (wind power, solar, biomass) in order to stop the use of nuclear power (more see "Public Offices"). She was in hisfirst and in hissecond cabinet. One of her central concerns in environmental policy was toquit to the use of nuclear energy. Her plans, which finally became reality in 2011 (after theFukushima nuclear accident), were blocked by directives of theFederal Ministry of the Environment, headed byKlaus Töpfer (1990–1994) andAngela 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 theplans 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 ansSecond 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 tenincineration 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 andElbtalaue [de] (biosphere reserve).
After the1994 Lower Saxony state election on 13 March 1994, Griefahn became a member of theLandtag of Lower Saxony.
From1998 to 2009 Griefahn was a Member of theBundestag. From 1998 to 2005, SPD and Grüne formed the first red-green coalition on federal level (first Schröder cabinet andSecond 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 ofGoethe-Institutes andGerman Schools abroad.
In 2005 Griefahn was elected chair of the bilateral committee on cultural diversity, which was appointed by theBundestag and the FrenchAssemblée 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 theInter-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'sexit from nuclear energy, under the leadership of co-chairsOle von Beust,Matthias Platzeck andJürgen Trittin.[1][2]
In 2020, Griefahn became the SPD candidate for lord mayor ofMülheim an der Ruhr;[3] she eventually lost against the Christian Democrat's candidate Marc Buchholz.[4]
Since 1986 Griefahn has been volunteering for theRight Livelihood Award Foundation. She has been a member of both the jury and the board. In 2010 she was appointed co-chair alongsideJakob 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 toMichael Braungart, an environmental chemist and professor of process engineering, who developed – in cooperation with the American architectWilliam McDonough – theCradle to Cradle design principle. Griefahn and Braungart have three children.
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