Article

In this article, the authors, among them Ecologic Institute's Linda Mederake, assess innovative climate governance in small-to-medium-sized structurally disadvantaged cities (SDCs). Considering their deeply ingrained severe economic and social problems, it would be reasonable to assume that SDCs act primarily as climate laggards or at best as followers. However, novel empirical findings show that SDCs are capable of acting as climate pioneers. Different types and styles of climate leadership and pioneership and how they operate within multi-level and polycentric governance structures are identified and assessed. SDCs seem relatively readily willing to adopt transformational climate pioneership styles to create 'green' jobs, for example, in the offshore wind energy sector and with the aim of improving their poor external image. Read more

The widespread use of the term "climate change" is an important framing victory for those who are not interested in reducing greenhouse gas emissions as required by the Paris Agreement. With this framing, it is no wonder that neither citizens nor policy reduce emissions sufficiently. that neither is what Nils Meyer-Ohlendorf, Head of International and European Governance at Ecologic Institute, writes in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. His article is available online.Read more

Green and Blue Infrastructure (GBI) is a network designed and planned to deliver awide range of ecosystem services and to protect biodiversity. Existing GBI designs lacked a systematic method to allocate restoration zones. This study proposes a novel approach for systematically selecting cost-effective areas for restoration on the basis of biodiversity, ecosystem services, and ecosystem condition to give an optimal spatial design of GBI. Ecologic Institute's Hugh McDonald contributed to this article.Read more