What practical measures can already be taken and implemented now in order to adapt to climate change? The competition "forward-thinking change – act now: adaptation pioneers wanted!" is looking for answers to this question. It was launched by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment and KomPass – the German Federal Environment Agency’s Competence Centre on Climate Impacts and Adaptation – in cooperation with Ecologic Institute.
What role does agriculture play in climate protection and how can it adapt itself to climate change? What approaches in science and policy can address this problem, and how can the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) contribute in this area? Over 100 scientists, policy makers, and experts from pertinent government agencies and associations discussed these and other questions at the conference "Climate Change in Agriculture", which took place on 20 January 2011 at the headquarters of the Permanent Representation of the Federal State of the Saarland in Berlin and was moderated by Prof. Dr. Beate Jessel. Norbert Röttgen, the German federal minister of the environment, opened the conference, which was organised by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation with the help of Ecologic Institute. The conference was also made possible by funds from the German Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety.
From 18-29 October 2010 the tenth meeting of the parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was held in Nagoya (Japan). Although expectations were low after the disappointing outcome of the climate conference in Copenhagen, which led to a general skepticism about multilateral agreements among experts, the Nagoya meeting terminated with a bunch of substantial decisions.
A breakthrough in the UN climate negotiations was achieved in Cancun, Mexico, during the first two weeks of December 2010. After the collapse of negotiations in Copenhagen in 2009, the Cancun conference revived the process by reaching a set of operational decisions that both formalise essential elements of last year’s “Copenhagen Accord” and keep the prospect of a binding agreement open. The decisions address key elements of the climate negotiations such as the aim of limiting the temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius, a formal anchoring of mitigation pledges by developed countries as well as mitigation actions by developing countries, transparency of actions and a new Global Climate Fund. The decisions have given a new impulse to building the future climate regime, but details still need to be worked out in the run-up to the next summit in South Africa in November/December 2011. More and more civil society observers are attending the COPs every year, and many observers essentially treat the COP as a central, global meeting place for all discussions, academic work and outreach related to climate change. A delegation from Ecologic Institute also attended the climate summit.
The Ecologic Institute will host an international dialogue on regional adaptation actions for coastal areas on 15 December 2009 as a complementary event to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. The aim is to contribute to an intensified exchange of good practice between different coastal regions of the world.
Results from Arctic TRANSFORM have been included in a compendium compiled by the Arctic Governance Project. Climate change has triggered a surge of research activity in the Arctic that attempts to address newly emerging concerns over governance, environmental impacts, traditional livelihoods, and expanding economic activity. The Arctic Governance Project aims to capture and assemble the best of these research efforts in order to lay the foundation for the way forward and communicate conclusions to policymakers.
The UN Climate Conference in Poznan, Poland, from 1 to 12 December 2008 was an important stepping stone in the negotiations on the future international climate regime that are set to conclude in Copenhagen in 2009. Ecologic was represented by Dr.
