Annual General Meeting 2019
The UN Sustainable Development Goals as a Global Action Plan
Dr Dina Barbian talking about “Sustainability”
On Friday 22nd March 2019 the Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft Nürnberg e.V. held its Annual General Meeting program in Caritas Pirkheimer Haus. Members and guests were first invited to a presentation by Dr. Dina Barbian, CEO of the Institute for Sustainability and a DBGN member, where she talked about the United Nation’s SDGs and their relevance for Germany and the United Kingdom. Dr Barbian explained how these goals came about, based on the preceding “Millenium goals” such as reducing poverty, improving health care and education, etc. Dina then explained the 17 individual goals one-by-one, accompanied by several hand-outs and book recommendations. This was followed by details about how the German government and local authorities such as the City of Nuremberg adhere to these goals and monitor the progress towards them. In a similar way the UN regularly evaluates the fulfilment for almost every country across the world. In the course of this part of the talk, Dina illustrated how Germany is in a somewhat better shape than the UK but still needs to improve on some goals such as protection of water and soil.
In the subsequent Q&A, the discussion quickly turned to a topic very high on the public agenda, climate change, and what each and every one of us can do about this very important challenge.
Dr. Barbian’s talk continues the series of non-political talks about topics that affect our daily life – neuroscience, human rights and now, sustainability. We look forward to more interesting discussions with the experts in these topics.
The Annual General Meeting
After a brief pause DBGN members convened the official AGM.
A Resignation
Due to pressure of work, Mr. Alexander Satt, tendered his resignation as secretary shortly before the AGM. The work Alexander has done on the DBGN website, in addition to the normal role of secretary are jobs that would have challenged less capable people and all present suitably expressed their gratitude.
The 2019 Program
The DBGN’s formal membership of the Deutsch-Britisch Gesellschaft Neztwerk based in Berlin has now been fully ratified. The 2019 program draws extensively on speaker recommendations from other members of the Netzwerk. In addition the society’s members have been honoured with an invitation to visit Ansbacher Markgrafenschloss for a tour of the Government of Central Franconia guided by Regierungspräsident Dr. Thomas Bauer, a DBGN Patron. Courtesy of Alexander Satt, details of all events in 2019 and future years are listed in our website calendar.
Elections
A change to the published agenda, Election of Secretary, resulted from Mr Satt’s resignation and after a brief discussion, Dr Jörn Kohlscheen was propose and duly, unanimously elected to the post.
The other three board members were duly, unanimously re-elected and hence the board now comprises:
William (Bill) Blundell – President
Jan Grensemann – Vice-President
Dr Jörn Kohlscheen – Secretary
Bernd Glückert – Treasurer