Berlin For Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens), the fact that the American Jennifer Morgan will be special representative for international climate policy at the Federal Foreign Office is a “dream cast”: “The world is global and that’s why our staff is global,” said the minister at the presentation of the Personnel on Wednesday.
From March 1st, the former head of the environmental organization Greenpeace International will be Germany’s face in international climate policy.
The ever-widening gap that exists in German climate policy between aspiration and reality has caused the former pioneering country a massive credibility problem when it comes to climate protection. The representatives of the leading mainstream parties did not live up to their name if they still showed fear of making courageous decisions in climate policy that should last beyond the next legislative period.
Morgan will now support Secretary of State Baerbock in her course on climate policy. The two women know each other from numerous climate conferences that Baerbock attended as a Green environmental politician.
The appeal of the 55-year-old provoked mixed reactions from the other parties. CSU General Secretary Markus Blume criticized on Twitter: “No place for Bavaria in the cabinet, but a lot of money for activists from the green bubble in the government apparatus”.
FDP parliamentary group leader Lukas Köhler told the Handelsblatt that he understands “that the change of a lobbyist, who has appeared in the past with quite radical views, meets with a certain astonishment in public”.
Nevertheless, everyone should be given a fair chance to find their way around new structures after a role change “and to work in future for the market-based orientation of German climate foreign policy agreed in the coalition agreement”.
“Ideal basic conditions for German climate diplomacy”
The human rights policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group, Frank Schwabe, said that Morgan would be “just as spectacular as good” as “the highest German climate official”. She understands international climate policy like no other. “An ideal basic condition for German climate diplomacy.”
Timo Lange from the Lobbycontrol association sees no problem. “As lobby control, we have also emphasized in the past that it must be possible to bring experts from outside into the ministries,” he said. But it is also clear that Morgan will have to represent the positions of the federal government and not those of Greenpeace in the future. The anti-corruption organization Transparency International also considers Morgan’s appointment to be unproblematic.
Jennifer Morgan has been active in the climate and environmental field for more than 30 years. The graduate political scientist worked at the WWF, later at the think tank E3G and the Washington think tank World Resources Institute (WRI).
During Germany’s EU Council Presidency in 2007, she worked on the German government’s advisory board, headed by the German climate researcher Hans Joachim Schellnhuber. Former Chancellor Angela Merkel appointed her to the Council for Sustainable Development (RNE) in 2013.
She also contributed to the fifth assessment report of the UN Climate Change Council IPCC. In 2016, Morgan advanced to the helm of Greenpeace International alongside New Zealander Bunny McDiarmid.
Known in China
The personnel is likely to be of great interest to the Chinese government. In Beijing diplomatic and environmental protection circles, Jennifer Morgan is considered an outspoken China expert and critic.
In her professional life she had traveled to the People’s Republic several times. When China’s head of state and party leader Xi Jinping announced new climate protection goals at the end of 2020, Morgan welcomed this, but at the same time was critical of how the leadership intended to achieve these goals.
In fact, China has fallen short of expectations in the past few months after an initial big commitment to plans to implement its climate protection goals. Just this week, new targets for reducing emissions in the steel sector, which is responsible for around 15 percent of China’s climate-damaging gases, were announced. Compared to previous projects, the Chinese leadership has scaled back its ambitions there.
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Morgan has been living in the German capital for several years. In 1989, shortly before reunification, she studied in Berlin. However, she then missed the fall of the wall in order to start her doctoral thesis on European politics in the USA. “It wasn’t good timing.”
According to Greenpeace, Morgan has often been described as an “anti-bureaucrat” who can build flexible teams within large structures. She herself puts it this way: “It’s about using the right people for the right goals, and not about structures or organizational charts.”
Spectacular actions, as is usual with the environmental organization, were obviously not easy for her. She told the Swiss Sunday newspaper in 2017 that she had to bring herself to go to demonstrations where she knew the police would intervene. When Morgan became Greenpeace leader, she took part in special activist training to learn how to climb better or hang banners.
Politicized in Switzerland
She first became politicized during a two-month exchange program in Niedererlinsbach, a small community in the Swiss canton of Solothurn. Back then, the US government supported the guerrilla war against the left-wing government in Nicaragua, Morgan recalled many years later. She had no idea about politics.
Friends and host families asked her what her government was doing there. That kept her busy and she started talking to more people about the role of the US in other countries. “That’s how I became sensitized to politics, especially foreign policy.”
“Fighting for Hope”, a book by Green Party co-founder Petra Kelly, then led to her interest in foreign and environmental policy coming together. She was 21 then. “I read the whole book in one go,” she once said.
“It was like someone wrote down everything I felt in my heart but was unable to put into words,” Morgan said. She found Kelly to be incredibly brave – “and that’s how she became a role model for me – in a way that changed my life”.
Her job at Greenpeace was “like coming home” to her. She has seen the world, moved among executives and in the upper echelons of the business world.
However, Greenpeace is much closer to its roots and has a huge advantage through its independence: “The principle of not accepting donations from either governments or companies means there is no need to hold back or be afraid of offending anyone. “
More: Greenpeace boss Morgan is apparently moving to the Foreign Office