The award ceremonies of the "School Children Talent Competition Award on Biodiversity Conservation" taking place in Addis Ababa and Jimma on August 10 were attended by ZEF senior researcher Dr. Manfred Denich in his function as project leader of the ZEF coffee project on the conservation and use of wild coffee (CoCE). The competition was sponsored by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN), whose president, Prof. Dr. Hartmut Vogtmann, held the laudatory speech. The Ethiopian Coffee Forest Forum, an NGO established in the framework of the ZEF coffee project, organized the competition in cooperation with the Institute of Biodiversity Conservation (IBC). Twelve children from 14 schools of southwest Ethiopia have been awarded for writing poems and songs as well as painting pictures expressing their perception of nature and coffee. Also, in Addis Ababa, the Deputy Head of Mission of the German Embassy and the Director General of IBC participated actively in the award ceremony.

The Stockholm World Water Week is an annual gathering of the scientific, business, policy and civil society communities in order to advance efforts related to water, the environment, livelihoods and poverty reduction. ZEF was organizing a session titled ‘Water, Politics and Development: Transforming Sanctioned Discourse into Strategic Approach’ on August 12.

Climate science and the Indian scientist - CSE News Bulletin [August 10, 2007]

Joy Mueni Maina Kiiru, ZEFb doctoral student from Kenia, has been nominated for the Robin Cosgrove Prize with her paper on "Microfinance: getting money to the poor or making money out of the poor; what was the promise?"

ZEF is proud and pleased to present its new strategy paper, sketching ZEF’s research activities for the coming decade. The new strategy paper is ZEF’s guide to a focused research approach and represents an updated version of the original strategy paper. It incorporates lessons learned since 1997 and sets strategic directions and long-term goals for the Center over the next ten years. It also shows how research, teaching, and advisory activities will be linked to those goals.