 |
|
ABOUT
US – HISTORY:
20 years of consulting experience
2012 saw the 20th anniversary of ECO's business
operations. With the years, the company's focus has evolved from
essentially forest- and rural development-oriented advice to a rather
governance-centered perspective. Policy reform (decentralization,
democratization, civil society empowerment) today constitutes a
major share of ECO's activities.
ECO was founded in 1992, the year
of the Rio World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD), as ECO
Gesellschaft für sozialökologische Programmberatung GbR.
Conceived in the spirit of WSSD paradigms, yet based on the managing
directors' 20 years' experience in bilateral cooperation, ECO made
a headstart as contractor of German official development assistance.
The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit
(GIZ) GmbH – formerly GTZ –, as one of the implementing
agencies for the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development's
development assistance, long remained the company's prime commissioning
body, later seconded by KfW Entwicklungsbank, AfDB, the World Bank
and non-governmentals.
Founded by experts in temperate/tropical
forestry and in social sciences, ECO sought new ways to "combine
human and natural resources for sustainable development", in
the area of natural resources management, namely forestry and silviculture.
Solutions for forestry-related challenges were integrated and proved
fruitful in rural development, food security
and obvioulsy, poverty reduction programmes.
Intersecting services in
capacity building and public relations were continually extended
and partly cast into branches of their own (cf. ECO Nature Edition,
ECO Expo). With ECOG, ECO established its own Agadir-based office
in the Maghreb. ECO Education was founded in 2005, to cover services
for the public education sector. |
 |
|
ECO co-founder Cornelia Sepp (left), working for the former
GTZ-GATE in 1984. |
 |
| Think-tank
for innovative concepts: head office Oberaula. |
Download
our anniversary brochure
"20 Jahre ECO" (German only, 5.3 MB) |
|
