Sustainable Development Goals
Our motivation.
Storytelling for positive change
Awareness of positive change is necessary to achieve economic and social transformation. By helping our clients tell their stories of change – whether it’s to transfer knowledge or to ensure public support – we actively contribute to sustainable development and -impact. We have tracked how – through the support to our clients – we have been able to contribute our small share to achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Because every contribution counts, and this is what drives us in our daily work.
UNCCD & GIZ:
Awareness Raising for Sustainable Land Management (SLM) and Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN)
By visually explaining the concept of Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) on behalf of GIZ, BMZ and UNCCD through video production, we contributed to an increased awareness of this less known topic, which is vital for planetary health, human wellbeing and food security.
From Ethiopia, we told the success story of Sustainable Land Management (SLM) in Tigra. A village found a way to save their water catchment area and cultivate dry land through simple, yet highly effective sustainable land management practices. By spreading their success story through video and a Spiegel Online article, we contributed to making the methods widely known – an important prerequisite for further spreading of the concept. ideally and spread to other regions.
Refugee & IDP crisis in Kurdistan Region of Iraq (2014-2017):
Ensuring public support for German transitional aid documentation
After the advance of the terrorist organization “Islamic State” in the fall and winter of 2014, around one million people have found refuge in the autonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq. The Federal Republic of Germany and the EU supported the refugees and IDPs in the camps and host communities with transitional aid on site – including measures for health care, clean water and sanitation. . In 2016, we supported GIZ in organizing public relations work on site and documented numerous projects photographically and on film, thus contributing to continuing support of the measures by German and European citizens and policy makers.
Invest for Jobs – Promoting job creation in eight African Partner Countries
Under the brand name Invest for Jobs, the Special Initiative “Decent work for a Just Transition” of the BMZ works on removing obstacles to investment in eight African countries. The aim is to thereby create more and better local employment opportunities in Africa, where unemployment rates, especially among young people, are often extremely high.
Together with the Agency Vier für Texas, we help Invest for Jobs address private companies, universities, chambers and associations as well as NGOs, to initiate projects with high job-creation potential in their partner countries. Thousands of training opportunities have already been created and the aim is to ultimately create up to 100,000 good jobs.
Enneatech & Master Builders: Marketing of green technologies
Our client Ennteach produces technical polymers on recycling basis at virgin-plastics quality, helping important industries reduce their CO2-footprint by up to 90 percent. Their products’ high-quality mechanical characteristics despite the basis on recycling material makes them a real asset on the way to a circular economy. With Master Builders Solutions we developed the price-winning content marketing campaign “Quantified Sustainable Benefits” to promote their chemical engineering product solutions that offer economic, ecological and qualitative advantages at the same time, when compared to conventional technology.
German Zero: Crafting a 1,5 degree Climate Action plan for Germany
As an “editor in chief” Fabian participated in a 3-day expert “hackathon” by the NGO German Zero and afterwards coordinated a team of other contributing experts and editors, together crafting a a 64-page ”1,5-Degree Climate Action Plan for Germany”, which was presented to the press in 2019. The report got considerable media coverage and made practical suggestions for a joint action against the climate crisis in Germany.
elbarlament / GIZ: Promoting Participation & Dialogue in Iraq
In 2024, Themenbüro is co-developing a communication strategy to promote Participation & Dialogue (P&D) in Iraq together with international and local Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) on site in Iraq. The objective is to raise acceptance and the spread of P&D as a standard instrument of peacebuilding and the development of solutions in communities that are marked by ethnical, religious and tribal conflicts.
International Spillover Effects:
Awareness-raising for an overlooked dilemma
Northern-hemisphere countries are often proud of their good sustainability-ratings – overlooking that much of their unsustainable footprint is simply allocated to other countries’ balance sheets. What seems like some statistical technicality distorts the proper interpretation of SDG-ratings in practice. We developed an easy to understand narrative for our client GIZ, to help make the meaning and consequences of “international spillover effects” known to policy makers world wide. Because only then can informed sustainable development solutions be implemented in fair partnerships.