Bundesstiftung Umwelt Hands Green Award to Hamburg Lawyer Who Has Been Sentencing Trees to Federal Hearings Since Spring
The German Environmental Prize goes to an environmental lawyer and an engineer who have, by official account, moved an entire ministry's lunch break outdoors.
The Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt has presented the German Environmental Prize to Hamburg environmental lawyer Roda Verheyen and engineer Klaus Vossenkaul, after the two adopted a policy of holding every administrative meeting they attend outdoors, in the open air, whatever the weather. The foundation's jury described the pair as «role models who show how things can move forward in a positive direction».
Since the spring, Verheyen has required that all written legal submissions in her Hamburg office be read aloud on the pavement outside, in front of the building's bicycle rack, before they are filed. Vossenkaul, who trained as an engineer, has ordered that every drawing for the district's sewer renovation be pinned to a fence and reviewed by passers-by before approval. Municipal staff who had previously worked indoors now carry their desks down the stairs each morning, a process the city's facilities department has logged as the largest single relocation of furniture in the district's history.
The foundation said the two laureates had also persuaded a neighbouring law firm and a regional water authority to follow suit. Both now hold their Friday planning sessions on the roof of a multi-storey car park, where staff have been asked to bring their own folding chairs. A spokesperson for the foundation said the jury had been moved by the scale of the commitment and by the fact that nobody involved had asked for an umbrella.
Verheyen, accepting the prize, said: «We are not doing this for the cameras. We are doing it because a letter that has never been read in the rain has never really been tested.» Vossenkaul added that his next project would be to hold the district's annual budget vote in the Elbe.
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