Ecology and sustainable development are central areas for securing the future of humanity. It is to the credit of the green movement within and outside parliaments that ecology has become one of the main arenas of politics. There is hardly another subject which, within the last 30 years, has been thus transformed from the concern of a few scientists, activists (often thought of as "nutters") into a topic of world conferences.

On the other hand the 1997 UN summit Rio+ 5 produced a sobering account of the state of sustainable policy: Almost universally the agenda of ecological change has been displaced by the agenda of globalisation. This trend is noticable in Germany, too, where unemployment and the controversy concerning investor-friendly policy have superseded ecology as main issues of political debate.
At present the Heinrich Böll Foundation puts the main emphasis on the areas global energy and climate policy, i.e. discussions about the opportunities of renewable energy and the problems of nuclear power.