Mandy Hinzmann and Doris Knoblauch (both Ecologic Institute) each accompanied a class in October 2022 with the Plastic Pirates, a Citizen Science campaign to collect data on (plastic) waste pollution in rivers. The students take on the role of scientists and collect, sort and catalogue litter according to scientific methods. The results are checked and incorporated into a large study.

Since we learned how to produce plastic, humans have manufactured more than 8.3 billion tons of it – most of which ended up as waste somewhere on the planet. This leads plastic waste to enter the landscape, rivers, beaches, and eventually ocean. We asked our listeners what, in their opinion, is the issue with plastic pollution. The answers ranged from negative impacts on human health and the environment to lack of recycling infrastructure and the global dimension of the plastics problem.

This webinar was jointly organised by the projects: INTERLACE, CONEXUS, REGREEN and CLEARING HOUSE as an official side-event of the European Week of Regions and Cities 2022. The webinar brought together about 500 representatives from cities, regions and local authorities, city network representatives, policy-makers, researcher, civil society and experts on nature-based solutions and urban ecosystem restoration from Europe, China and Latin America.

The aim of the project is to discuss the current state of knowledge and future role of environmental provisions in free trade agreements. The focus is particularly on a literature review of the last ten years, as well as the (legal) analysis of a global selection of free trade agreements.

Kemper, Melanie, Ilka Merbold 2022: Konzept finale Website forum-fischschutz.de. Umwandlung des dynamischen Portals in eine statische Archiv-Website. Berlin, October 2022, unpublished.

Nature-based Solutions (NBS) for EU cities and regions represent an integral part of the EU's transition to achieving climate neutrality. In this panel, moderated by Ecologic Institute's McKenna Davis, experts discussed effective, just and inclusive strategies to design, implement and manage NBS, while engaging under-represented or marginalised stakeholders. The event was part of the European Week of Regions and Cities.

This policy brief summarizes the results of 17 case studies of non-EU countries. It presents the main lessons and takeaways for the EU along the four challenges that define the 4i-TRACTION project: facilitating integration across sectors, shifting investments, rolling out infrastructure and fostering innovation for a climate-neutral economy.

The consortium of Ramboll, CE Delft and Ecologic Institute supports the EEA with the study "Defining adaptation needs, counting adaptation finance and enabling actions at national and European level," which aims to provide knowledge products to feed into different EEA products and processes in the field of adaptation and adaptation finance.

In her presentation, titled "Evaluating environmental policies with citizen science data? An example from the Plastic Pirates investigating plastic pollution of rivers", Linda Mederake (Ecologic Institute) presented an approach to evaluate the Single-Use Plastics Directive with the help of citizen science data.

The EU Effort Sharing Regulation is of great importance for EU climate policy, but its revision hardly gets public attention. This is a problem. Without a public debate, important structural issues of EU climate policy could be set wrong. In the Tagesspiegel Nils Meyer-Ohlendorf makes proposals for a good outcome of the trialogue negotiations.

This project is split into two work streams, assessing four CAP Strategic Plans and assessing approaches to enhance and safeguard biodiversity through carbon farming standards.

In an interview with "Bürger schaffen Wissen", the central platform for citizen science in Germany, Linda Mederake (Ecologic Institute) and Tim Kiessling (Kiel Science Factory) talk about the history of the citizen science project "Plastic Pirates", their experiences in working with school classes and their expectations for the ECSA Conference 2022.

The EU-funded project assists the European Commission in identifying relevant tree-planting initiatives that can be counted towards the 3-billion-tree target. It also engages key stakeholders in the initiative, provides guidance on available funding instruments, and analyses challenges faced by stakeholders in implementing tree-planting projects across the EU.

The project aims to facilitate a focused, well-founded and trustful exchange between leading German environmental organisations and think tanks on the climate agenda of the G7 and the G20. The aim is to invite persons to the expert dialogue who have distinguished themselves through years of political commitment in multilateralism and who are multipliers in their field. The expert dialogue will identify the most pressing climate policy issues for the G7 and the G20 and discuss recommendations for action.

This project for the European Commission's Climate Directorate General investigates policies that put a price on agricultural emissions and reward farmers and others in the land use sector for sequestering carbon on their land.