Dr. h. c. Dipl. Phys. Wolfgang Scheffler

I was born in Austria in 1956, but spent most of my life in Germany. In 1983 I finished my masters degree in physics at the University of Cologne. At that time, I already had started the development of the Scheffler parabolic reflectors. Their first use was the application for solar cooking in rural Kenya, replacing scarce firewood. This was done with an emphasis on local construction of the devices. Later this activities spread to other countries like India, and the NGO Solare Bruecke was founded in 1992. In 2006, my colleague Heike Hoedt and I received the Nuclear-Free Future Award for this work, in the category “Solutions”. During all these years, seeing the common problems around me, one thought kept nagging my mind: “If only our common decision-making could be improved, there would be less mess to clean up from all the problems we create by decisions which don't meet the real needs”. In 2001 I learned from a radio interview with the German Prof. Peter Dienel about the actual existence of a superbly effective participatory decision-making process, which he had developed in 1973. I started promoting his method, and finally in 2015 made it eligible for the German voters by forming a new political movement around it.