Globally Sustainable Municipality Schleswig-Holstein

After six years, the “Globally Sustainable Municipality Schleswig-Holstein” (GNK) project is coming to an end. The network meeting of the GNK municipalities was therefore held in the state capital of Kiel with words of welcome from State Secretary Katja Günther, Ministry for Energy Transition, Climate Protection, Environment and Nature, and a certificate presentation ceremony.

Since 2017, corsus has worked with Hannah Heinevetter on behalf of the Service Agency Communities in One World (SKEW) to advise and support a total of 27 municipalities throughout Schleswig-Holstein on the implementation of sustainability and the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Thanks to the GNK project, many municipalities have set out to develop a municipal sustainability strategy, such as Neustadt i. H. or the city of Flensburg. Others are taking a more bottom-up approach to sustainability and are organising various projects together with committed citizens, such as the Kellinghusen office in the district of Steinburg.

During the network meeting, the representatives of the GNK municipalities and other municipal and state stakeholders looked back on the six years together. Using 15 posters from the municipalities, it was possible to see how the individual processes were organised and implemented in the municipalities. The focus was on giving participants the opportunity to discuss the individual projects and processes. A much-discussed topic was how a municipal sustainability strategy can be transferred to implementation and monitoring. There was a joint discussion about what is needed at municipal level in the future in order to fulfil the further implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Among other things, there were calls for sustainability to be made a mandatory task for local authorities.

At the end of the event, the municipal representatives were presented with GNK certificates by Sebastian Ohlmeyer from the Service Agency Communities in One World (SKEW) and Dennis Scheffler from the Ministry of Energy Transition, Climate Protection, Environment and Nature (MEKUN). The network meetings for the GNK municipalities and interested stakeholders are to continue after the end of the project in order to maintain inter-municipal cooperation on sustainability.

corsus and Hannah Heinwevetter would like to thank all participating municipalities for their commitment and time and look forward to working together in the future.