Ms. Imme Scholz (Co-Chair)
Co-President of the Heinrich Böll Foundation
Imme Scholz is Co-President of the Heinrich Böll Foundation and former Deputy Director of the German Development Institute (DIE; now IDOS – German Institute of Development and Sustainability). She is also Honorary Professor of the Centre for Ethics and Responsibility at Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg. Imme studied sociology at the Freie Universität Berlin. Imme joined DIE as a researcher in 1992 and worked on trade regulations for environmental requirements to products and production processes. With her PhD she tried to understand the limited effect of certification schemes for sustainable forestry on the sustainability of the timber trade in the Brazilian Amazon region. From 1999-2002 she was an environmental policy advisor in the Amazon region of Brazil on behalf of German development cooperation, as part of a large pilot programme for the protection of Brazilian rainforests. On her return to DIE she took over the newly founded environmental department where she created a research group on adaptation to climate change. In 2009 she was appointed as deputy director of the Institute. At DIE, Imme was very active at the science-policy interface, within the T20, the European Think Tanks Group, in policy dialogues with China on sustainable development and in the sustainable development community. She was a member of the German Sustainability Council for nine years and of the German Committee Future Earth (DKN Future Earth). Currently, she is a member of the extended steering committee of SDSN Germany and of the Bioeconomy Council.