The projects website provides an overview of the project objectives, structure and partners as well as events and news related to relevant issues of the project. Furthermore, project outputs such as deliverables, policy briefs and publications are regularly promoted on the website. Ecologic Institute is responsible for the concept, design and programming.

Work Package 3 (WP3) of the ENABLE-project aimed to analyze citizen perceptions of and preferences for various CES provided by GBI. It also identified potential means to integrate such knowledge and information in municipal planning processes. This report presents the research results of the work package.

As part of a project to structure the energy law, Ecologic Institute contributed to a discussion paper on conceptual considerations on the concept of plant in the Renewable Energy Act . Based on the functions of the term "plant", the authors recommend a new conceptualization, according to which the current abstract term "plant" is replaced by energy carrier-specific terms "plant", which are first combined in a catalog to form a uniform term "plant". The discussion paper is available for download.

In September 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including target 15.3, which aims to strive towards land degradation neutrality (LDN) by 2030. This has opened a "window of opportunity" for many countries to strengthen policies for sustainable use of land and soils. This chapter first outlines the concept, the main elements and the current international framework for assessing the progress towards SDG target 15.3. Ecologic Institute's authors propose a stepwise approach to further tailor national requirements with the overall goal of LDN implementation. Since both the concept of LDN and the internationally agreed implementation framework leave room for national interpretation, the example of Germany is used to illustrate how the implementation process can be set up at the national level and what experiences have been made.

In this chapter Ecologic Institute's Dr. Ralph Bodle analyses the legal instruments and regulatory approaches in German law for achieving land degradation neutrality (LDN). Section 1 outlines the conceptual components of LDN that the law has to address: preventing degradation, restoring degraded land, offsetting degradation at project level and land-use planning and management. Section 2 analyses which legal mechanisms German law provides to address all conceptual components of LDN. The assessment and conclusion in Sect. 3 argue that despite a range of legal provisions and instruments in German law that protect soil, the absence of an overarching holistic concept is a fundamental shortcoming also with regard to LDN.

The long-term transformation to a low-carbon economy requires innovation in technology and existing practices in all sectors of the economy. The Innovation Fund under the EU Emissions Trading System is meant to support such innovation projects in industry and energy. According to analysis by the Ecologic Institute, the IF should focus on break-through projects with a high additional emission reduction effect and provide adequate financing conditions that allow also for high risk projects to be supported.

Stakeholder and public engagement are key elements of EU policy development, as well as of responsible research and innovation. Over a period of three years, BioSTEP has designed and implemented a wide range of citizen and stakeholder engagement activities regarding the development of Europe's bioeconomy. This paper, edited by Ecologic Institute's Holger Gerdes and Zoritza Kiresiewa, presents a set of research recommendations, which builds on the lessons learned from the application of BioSTEP's participatory tools. The BioSTEP research recommendations are available for download.

The BONARES conference "Soil as a Sustainable Resource" took place in Berlin from 26 to 28 February 2018. Ecologic Institute staff attended the conference and presented the interim results of the Soil³ project – Sustainable Subsoil Management. Dr. Ana Frelih-Larsen, Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute, gave a presentation on "Social acceptance of measures to improve the subsoil in German agriculture".

The objective of this case study is to apply the AQUACROSS Assessment Framework (D3.2) approach to study the Faial-Pico Channel MPA. By doing so, the overarching aim is to understand how applying the Assessment Framework and therefore the concept of Ecosystem Based Management (EBM) can lead to new and alternative management approaches for the improved protection and preservation of aquatic biodiversity.

Today almost 50% of the world's population lives in urban areas. Urban wetlands are found in cities and their suburbs. They play a vital role in making cities safe, resilient and sustainable (the goal of SDG 11). As urban sprawl takes its course, wetlands are under threat. Following up on ethnographic field studies carried out for the ERA4CS project INNOVA in one of Europe's outermost regions, Grit Martinez of Ecologic Institute was invited to participate in a regional World Wetlands activity in Guadeloupe.

This infographic provides a brief overview of soil values for Land Use Categories based on soil threats.

This infographic illustrates the basic principle of an extended indicator of land use and land-use change: worsening and improvements in land use are tracked and balanced against each other.

This infographic shows a procedure how to approach the operationalization of the LDN concept and which questions have to be answered in this way. It builds on the findings of 14 UNCCD pilot studies (Global Mechanism of the UNCCD 2016a) and interprets them further. It visualizes seven strategic steps.

The video "Innovative Bio-based Products: Investment, Environmental Impacts and Future Perspectives" invites you to the eponymous conference, which will take place in Brussels on 6 June 2018. In addition to providing logistical information, it contains information on the conference's content and the target audience.