Dr. Wolfgang Plischke (3rd from left), Management Board member of Bayer AG responsible for Innovation, Technology and Environment, with the Environmental Envoys and Frithjof Finkbeiner (2nd from right), co-founder of the World Contract Foundation and the Global Marshall Plan. The Environmental Envoys from left to right: Arvind Venkataraman (India), Zhuo Qun Nie (China), Pedro Luis Borge Chaffe (Brazil), Anna Paziewska (Poland), Margaret Kawira Koli (Kenya).

In partnership with UNEP, Bayer organizes and promotes the Bayer Young Environmental Envoy Programme which is aimed at improving young people’s knowledge about the environment, supporting them in their environmental commitments, providing them with an opportunity to network with their fellow youth leaders and enabling them observe environmental practices in industry and in life in one of the most technologically advanced nations, Germany.

This programme came into effect in 1998 as a local project in Thailand with participants from the Philippines and Singapore coming on board in 2001. Between 2001 and 2006, this programme extended further into the Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and Europe regions of the world with China, Poland, Indonesia, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Kenya, Vietnam and Malaysia joining in.

Many former participants in this Bayer initiative are now employed in areas where they play a key role in environmental protection in their home countries.