What do an entrepreneur, a filmmaker, a lawyer, a political scientist, a fireman, a geographer and an economist all have in common? Our love of this planet Earth and the fight to protect our natural resources. This is what we set out to do each and every day as an influential environmental organisation in the south of Munich.

Protect the Planet – an NGO for environmental change – came into being in 2015 on the initiative of Dorothea Sick-Thies. Ever since, we have been advocating for ambitious climate-change goals and have managed to clock up some successes along the way.

We campaign tirelessly for climate change mitigation on a daily basis. It is important for us to never lose sight of our goal. Our vision and mission serve as the guiding star for what we do and set the course for all our projects.

It is our vision to prevent the climate catastrophe, and make this planet a liveable and just world.

Our mission is to convince those responsible in government and industry to take appropriate measures, by pressing for progress on climate policy through campaigns, projects and – where necessary – court action on behalf of climate change casualties.

We leverage the power and positive influence of commerce to achieve the Paris climate goals by ensuring exemplary companies and responsible entrepreneurs stand in solidarity with civilian action groups. This strengthens the impact of good role models and pioneers on political decision-makers. We also persuade companies to rethink their options and engage in climate-friendly commerce.

In addition, we inform, inspire and encourage society as a whole to commit to the necessary steps to protect our climate, spread educational messages about the need to protect the climate, support consumer change, and secure and build acceptance for the expansion of local wind power.

We have been advocating for ambitious climate-change goals since 2015, and have managed to make good progress along the way, including the significant contribution we made to three successful referenda: Stop Using Hard Coal (2017), Save the Bees (2019) and the Public Petition to Preserve Green Spaces (2023).

We also initiated the first climate court case at a European level (2018), which formed the basis of the historic Federal Constitutional Court complaint (2021) to which we also contributed.

Here is an overview of our successes and milestones of the past few years:

2015 Protect the Planet set up as a non-governmental organisation by Dorothea Sick-Thies, Markus Gohr and Carl-A. Fechner.

2017 Successful participation in the referendum Stop Using Hard Coal to turn off the Munich hard-coal-fired power station by 31 December 2022.

2018 Protect the Planet gGmbH founded.

2018 irst European People’s Climate Case filed with the European Court on behalf of plaintiffs from eight different countries.

2019 We were one of the co-initiators of the petition forBiodiversity and Natural Beauty “Save the Bees“, thus contributing to the most successful Bavarian referendum in history.

2020 Started the first intake of Campaigning School in conjunction with Günther Metzges-Diez, the Fundraising Academy and Germanwatch.

2020 Supported the constitutional complaint “Neubauer et al. vs the German Federal Government” against Germany’s inadequate Climate Protection Act of 2019 in cooperation with Greenpeace, Germanwatch and environmental lawyer Dr Roda Verheyen.

2021 Rejection of the People’s Climate Case only a few months after the EU Parliament had increased its climate goals to 60% in accordance with the plaintiffs’ plea.

2021 Historic success of the Constitutional Complaint against the German Climate Protection Act, when climate protection was moved up the constitutional priority list and the rights of future generations strengthened by the decision of the German Constitutional Court.

2021 Launched the WindRat network for greater acceptance of wind power and much faster expansion of our wind power capacity.

2021 Corporate Climate Action: We supported the last farmer of Lützerath, Eckhart Heukamp, in his fight against appropriation of his land by the RWE coal company.

2021 Launched an informative series of events in conjunction with our voluntary event coordinator, Dr Helmut Paschlau.

2022 Successfully prevented a new gas-fired power plant in Munich in collaboration with the Saubere Energie München (Clean Energy for Munich) network.

2022 Dorothea-Laura-Janina-Sick Foundation for the Environment was founded.

2023 Successful citizen’s referendum to preserve green spaces for effective climate-adaptation measures for Munich, as one of the cities with the smallest number of cooling green spaces and the highest percentage of land sealing.

Our annual reports provide information about our projects, our successes, and internal matters at Protect the Planet. Click here to download:

• Annual report 2021 (German)
• Annual report 2022 (German)