Vortrag bei STEPI Fred Manske 21.06.2002

Basic Data on Bremen Bremen is the smallest of the German federal states. It is situated in the north of Germany and consisting of two towns: Bremen and Bremerhaven. Bremerhaven is situated at the North Sea and has a big harbour, especially for container shipping and exporting and importing cars. All in all the federal state Bremen has about 680.000 inhabitants. But the region – meaning Bremen and a 30 kilometre zone around it – has more than one million inhabitants (Germany has about 82 million inhabitants). The number of work places in Bremen is about 355.000 (in 1999).  The number of unemployed: about 44.000 persons (15,8% of work force; the quota for Germany in the whole being 11,7% - figures for 1999). Rates are declining; GNP growth in Bremen now higher than in Germany as a whole.   Main industry about 15 – 20 years ago: ship building; deep crisis; today just some shipbuilding industry left.  Main industries today: car production (Mercedes Benz, C-Class and all sports cars); aeroplanes (Airbus); aerospace (Ariadne; satellites); high tech ships (marine; yachts); food (coffee); biotechnology.  New economic-scientific centres: technology park around the university; airport city around the airport. There is a big institutional problem for Bremen: more than 120.000 of the work places in the federal state Bremen are being “occupied” by persons not living in Bremen. This is a serious problem because these persons are paying their income taxes not in Bremen but in the villages around Bremen where they live. Bremen is loosing a lot of money through that income tax regulation. If that wouldn’t be the case Bremen would be much richer than it already is (Bremen is belonging to the 50 richest regions throughout Europe).

Regional Innovation Politics: The Development of Environmental Industry in the Bremen Region Some results of a research project on the possibilities to combine environmental and employment politics on a regional level will be presented today. The research was undertaken in the region of Bremen during 1997 to 2000.  Introductory remarks on environmental policy in Germany and its employment impacts and outline of the presentation  In the case of Germany environmental politics started in the beginning of the 1970s. A tight network of environmental regulations has been created between 1971 and about 1986. This politics was rather successful, Germany has achieved an early decoupling of economic growth from the emission of some major pollutants. For example, over the 1980s, while GNP grew by 23%, air emissions declined by 71% for SO2 and 35% for peculiarities. Between 1975 and 1992 west German manufacturing industry and the governments (the central government and the federal states – the “Bundesländer”) spent about 465 billion German marks on pollution abatement, that is rather much money compared with other countries (Sprenger 1995, 4). This raised the question weather the competitiveness of German economy has been weakened through the costly environmental policy. A number of studies have been carried out to prove this question. Representative is the study commissioned by the “Umweltbundesamt” (Federal Environmental Agency). It was coming to the conclusion that the German economy as a whole was weakened through environmental policy (Umweltbundesamt 1992). On the contrary, the rather rigid environmental policy created a very strong “green industry” in Germany being world wide number one concerning exports. In the case of the overall employment effects it is widely agreed that the environmental policy created new work places in the emerging “green part” of the economy. Representative here is the study commissioned by the Ministry of Environment (Bundesminister für Umwelt 1996). Following this study, in 1994 about 956.000 people have been employed in „green sectors“ – about 2,7 % of all employees in Germany at that time. The assumed positive impacts of environmental policy caused many federal states (or regions) of Germany to launch programmes that are combining environmental protection and the creation of green industries/green services. Bremen was one of the first regions implementing such a policy. In the following we will first try to explain the environmental politics in Germany as a “”Synthesis Model”. Then, we will give an outline of the Bremen policy in this field; and in the end some main effects of this policy will be presented.