Speakers
Monika Zimmermann
Director, ICLEI International Training Center
Biography:
Monika Zimmermann is Director of the International Training Centre (ITC) of ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability based at its European Secretariat in Freiburg, Germany.
ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability is an international association of local governments and national and regional local government organizations that have made a commitment to sustainable development. More than 550 cities, towns, counties, and their associations worldwide comprise ICLEI's growing membership. ICLEI works with these and hundreds of other local governments through international performance-based, results oriented
campaigns and programs.
ICLEI's International Training Centre (ITC) is the international training and conference service unit of ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability. The ITC helps to build the know-how of local government leaders and officials as well as of their partners in their capacities as policy makers, managers, trainers and/or consultants for urban sustainability. Monika has been the manager of numerous significant international training projects as well as congresses and seminars on subjects including Local Agenda 21, urban governance, resource management, energy management and climate protection, and urban sustainability.
The multiple large international local government conferences in her responsibility include the Local Government Session at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg 2002 (this was one of the biggest co-events to WSSD), the Municipal Leaders Summits on Climate Change, organised back-to-back to the COPs and the ICLEI World Congresses, of which the latest one was held in Cape Town/South Africa in 2006. Furthermore, Monika has designed ICLEI’s WWW-based distance training scheme and managed distance training courses on Local Agenda 21 and environmental management.
In 2005 and 2006, Monika started to introduce biodiversity as an issue for ICLEI.
She is ICLEI’s representative in the “Local Action for Biodiversity” Project, managed by ICLEI in partnership with IUCN and others and she acts as Manager of ICLEI’s international Biodiversity Task Force. In this capacity she has drafted the MoU between ICLEI and IUCN to be signed shortly. Currently, Monika is the responsible project manager for ICLEI’s part in the LARA project, aiming to acquire further support for Countdown 2010 among local governments in Europe. Following the longstanding practice to represent local governments at UN events, Monika has initiated a local government co-event to COP 9 on Biodiversity in the
ICLEI Member City Bonn.
Having done studies in political and administrative sciences and journalism at the universities of Konstanz and Berlin, Germany, she holds a Master’s degree in Political Science (FU Berlin). Before she joined ICLEI she has worked as a researcher at the Institute for Urban Research (IfS) in Berlin. From 1990 to 1996 Monika was board member of the Deutscher Naturschutzring, the German umbrella organisation of environmental and nature protection organisations. Prior to this mandate, Monika was board member of the national citizens’ groups organisation BBU.