Konrad von Moltke, an inspiration to Ecologic Institute, passed away on 19 May 2005 at his home in Vermont. In 1976, Konrad established the Institute for European Environmental Policy in Bonn (Germany), with a mission that we carry forward today. He supported Ecologic Institute from the beginning and was particularly associated with our work on development, trade and investment, and international environmental governance. As a pioneering thinker, Konrad was an inspiration to the whole institute, as teacher and advisor he was a guide to us all, and his example and principles will continue to be a moral compass for our advocacy. Our thoughts are with his family who feel most acutely the loss of a great humanist and a towering personality.

The French Minister for Ecology and Sustainable Development, Serge Lepeltier, opened Ecologic’s 10th anniversary reception on 25 May 2005 in Berlin. The festivities took place on the eve of the conference "Towards a stronger system of International Environmental Governance". More than 200 guests came together to congratulate Ecologic, meet international colleagues and friends and enjoy one of the first warm evenings of the year overlooking the Federal Chancellery.

This project aims at developing a set of governance as well as technical indicators to be used in analyzing the current performance of transboundary river and lake basins in Africa and to test these indicator sets in order to support management processes at the basin level in selected basins. After the initial discussions, which were started during a first joint workshop in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso in November 2007, three focused workshops were held with representatives from selected basin organizations.

<p>The memorandum &amp;quot;Understand &amp;ndash; Evaluate &amp;ndash; Shape. Transdisciplinary knowledge for a sustainable society&amp;quot; has been presented by leading actors in the field of transdisciplinary sustainability research. They hope to ensure that social-ecological research can be deepened and expanded in the coming years &amp;ndash; regarding content, organization, and institutions. Ecologic Institute welcomes this memorandum and calls for others to sign it. The memorandum was submitted to the German Federal Minister of Research Annette Schavan for consideration, but the opportunity to sign it and show your support for social-ecological research still exists. The Director of Ecologic Institute, R. Andreas Kraemer, wrote the memorandum as part of an expert group.</p>&#13;

After three years, the evaluation team for the National Climate Protection Initiative (Nationale Klimaschutzinitiative, NKI) has drawn a positive balance across all government-funded areas: economy, consumers and communities. All analysed criteria (impact of climate protection, relevance, broad effect, and economic impact) were rated positively overall. In its October issue, the journal "Umwelt" published an article about the final conference of the NKI-project with the title: "A positive result".

As a contribution to the ongoing discussion on the reform of the international in-vestment regime, members of the Ecologic legal team submitted two briefs to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). UNCTAD is a UN organisation dealing with developing countries and their role in international trade and investment. Both briefs are available for download.