The EU Commission's proposal for an EU climate law marks important progress. It sets an unmistakable target for climate neutrality in the EU by 2050, writes Nils Meyer-Ohlendorf in the Tagesspiegel. Nevertheless, the proposal has five gaps that should be closed during the legislative process.

Despite numerous efforts to promote and implement more integrated approaches, coordination problems persist and impede sustainable water governance and management. This paper introduces a framework for guiding a transdisciplinary diagnostic approach (i.e. a context-sensitive assessment of multi-level water governance, which is combined with a change management process) to address such coordination problems. The approach aims at addressing some of the challenges identified in scientific scholarship and water governance practice by combining context-specific participatory assessments of individual cases with comparative case analysis guided by a generic conceptual framework.

Olfert, A.; Schiller, G.; Brunnow, B.; Walther, J.; Hirschnitz-Garbers, M.; Hölscher, K.; Wittmayer, J. (2020). Prozessbegleitende Nachhaltigkeitsbewertung als Werkzeug für ein nachhaltigkeitsorientiertes Infrastrukturmanagement. InfrastrukturRecht 17 (2020) 1, p. 17-20

Certain opinions, people or parties should not be made "socially acceptable". This is a problematic notion, writes Nils Meyer-Ohlendorf in the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

The German article "Seven at one blow! Regional Food Strategies as key to more sustainable Urban-Rural cooperations" deals with the role of regional food strategies as a promising approach for an integrated, sustainable development of urban and rural areas. The article, written by Stephanie Wunder, Coordinator Food Systems at the Ecologic Institute and Franziska Wolff, Head of Environmental Law & Governance at Öko-Institut summarizes the results of the UBA project "Rural Urban Nexus", led by Ecologic Institute. The text is part of "The Critical Agricultural Report". Since 1993 "Der kritische Agrarbericht" is an annually published flagship book, that critically reflects about agriculture in Germany in the context of the EU Common Agricultural Policy. The 2020 edition focused on the changing relationship between rural and urban areas.

Public opinion seems to have settled on the conviction that the climate crisis is Europe's latest political divide - after migration, the Euro and conflicts over the rule of law. But there is another story that needs to be told. Climate policies have always been contentious. They are bound to be. But contrary to the growing perception of climate policies as Europe's new political divide, climate is a policy field where Europe works together, writes Nils Meyer-Ohlendorf in the Tagesspiegel.

Dr. Stephan Sina, Senior Fellow at Ecologic Legal, has published an article on the Federal Climate Protection Act in the first edition of this year's Neue Zeitschrift für Verwaltungsrecht (NVwZ). The contribution is a joint effort by several authors, two of them officials at the Federal Ministry of the Environment, Nature Protection and Nuclear Safety (BMU) who have worked on the Climate Protection Act. The article presents the main elements of the new law and discusses its legal and practical impact. It can be obtained via the website of the NVwZ.

There are numerous regulatory approaches at the international, regional and national level regarding the handling of plastic products and plastic waste. What they all have in common is their limited effectiveness. Linda Mederake, Stephan Gürtler and Doris Knoblauch argue that this is partly due to the fact that at the international level a large number of binding agreements and voluntary initiatives have developed independently of one another and are therefore not coordinated in terms of content. The Plastics Atlas 2019 is available online.

Guske, A.-L.; Jacob, K.; Hirschnitz-Garbers, M.; Peuckert, J.; Schridde, S.; Stinner, S.; Wolff, F.; Zahrnt, D.; Ziesemer, F. (2019). Stories that Change Our World? Narratives of the Sustainable Economy. Sustainability, 11, 6163.

This article by Ecologic Institute's Linda Mederake and Doris Knoblauch uses a structuring qualitative content analysis to investigate the parliamentary debates of two recently adopted plastic policies in the EU – namely the EU Plastics Strategy and the Single-Use Plastics Directive – and assess the relevance of public health and environmental arguments for the EU debate.

The enormously innovative German industry is in a position to develop many of the technical solutions required to achieve climate neutrality and bring them onto the market. However, this is not a fast-selling item, but also requires a long-term commitment from the public sector. In this article, Jan-Erik Thie and Benjamin Görlach of Ecologic Institute discuss how German industry can become climate neutral and why the public sector plays an important role. The article is available online.

Profound societal transformations are needed to move society from unsustainability to greater sustainability under continually changing social and environmental conditions. A key challenge is to understand the influences on and the dynamics of collective behavior change toward sustainability. In this paper, the authors of whom Grit Martinez of Ecologic Institute is one, demonstrate how affective narrative expressions influence transitions to more sustainable collective behaviors.

Naumann, Stephan, Ulf Stein and Hannes Schritt 2019: Forum Fischschutz und Fischabstieg – Ergebnisse und Diskussion. In: WasserWirtschaft 2019, 10, 36-39.

Democracies need a compass, writes Nils Meyer-Ohlendorf in the ipg-journal. To find their way in the haze of polarised debate, the compass must offer four things. First, it must help to understand pluralism – it must help to endure and respect different opinions. Conversely, it must recognise that some positions are outside the democratic spectrum. Thirdly, it must ensure precise language. And fourth, it must identify trends in democracies. The article is available online.

The new President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has promised a European climate law. What it should look like describe Nils Meyer-Ohlendorf and Katharina Umpfenbach in the Tagesspiegel. The law should close five gaps.