2nd International Environmental Counsel: successful departure to an internationally connected active environmental movement
580 participants from 15 countries took part in the 2nd International Environmental Counsel in Gelsenkirchen (Germany) on 8/9 October 2011.
An intensive exchange of experiences among the participants took place in two plenary discussions, nine forums and thirteen workshops about 
very diverse topics of the environmental movement. People from different citizens’ action groups, environmental associations, trade unions, local political initiatives and parties, from the women’s movement, international solidarity work, migrant organizations, young people, farmers, environmental enterprises, artists, scientists and interested citizens came.
The challenge to act quickly in the face of the acute threatening of the foundations of life and the future of the current and coming generations through the development to a global environmental catastrophe was taken on unanimously. Priority was given to the discussion on how the environmental movement can enforce the necessary fundamental changes in the face of the variety of promising technologies and scientific solutions, in face of the fact that these solutions are not taken up, but instead are actually suppressed in the interest of leading international corporations.
An invigorating exchange of experiences developed in the face of the diverse experiences and the broad knowledge of the international environmental movement, but also a strategy discussion on how the environmental movement can overcome its fragmentation and become a superior force building the necessary structures of coordination and binding organizational cooperation locally, regionally, nationally and internationally.
It became apparent that today the environmental question is closely linked to the social questions in all countries and that therefore the joining together of the workers’ movement, the environmental movement and the social movement must be solved positively.
A 3 International Environmental Counsel in two years was unanimously resolved, as well as a final declaration also calling for an international strategy discussion taking up the various impulses of this counsel.
The declaration of the »World 
People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth« in Cochabamba in April 2010 was clearly reaffirmed, stating that a system of plunder and destruction of man and nature and of the whole planet can no longer be tolerated and that such a system has to be overcome worldwide.
An internationally composed coordinating group with eleven members from five countries and three continents was elected unanimously to prepare the 3rd International Environmental Counsel. An international cultural evening, an environmental market and many personal encouters completed the program. The counsel developed a general process of learning and respectful mutual contact in solidarity with a growing understanding for the respective interests, but also for their global context. The counsel ended with the song for Mother Earth (“Pacha Mama”) presented by the singer Doly Principe from Peru in a rousing and internationalist atmosphere of solidarity.
Dr. Detlef Rohm, Responsible person for the p ress of the coordinating group 2nd International Environmental Counsel
Lindenbergweg 1a, 64367 Mühltal, Germany,
Tel.: #(0)6151 144661
E-Mail:
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