The European Union is in a unique position to support and coordinate Member State efforts to develop Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) strategies, as well as support collaboration on the development and sharing of knowledge, standards and cost-effective tools. This finding and other key messages are presented in a new policy brief for EU policy makers, prepared as part of the EU FP7 Collaborative project RISC-KIT (Resilience-Increasing Strategies for Coasts-Toolkit) and in collaboration with PEARL (Preparing for Extreme and Rare events in coastaL regions). The policy brief is available for download.

Nearly 370 participants from over 40 countries participated in the 2nd European Resources Forum, which was hosted by the German Federal Environment Agency in Berlin on 10 and 11 November 2014 with the support of Ecologic Institute.

Ecologic Institute coordinated the organisation of the European Resource Forum (ERF) 2014. For these the programme brochure was developed and designed, to hand it over to participants. It contained information about the event agenda and schedule, speakers and a space for notes. The design of the brochure and the color scheme were based on the visual style of UBA. The ERF brochure is set on 48 pages. The A5 brochure was printed on recycled paper.

The regional conference "Closing the mineral cycles at farm level - Good practices to reduce nutrient loss in the Lombardy region" took place on 5 November 2014 at the "E.c.ho." Hotel, Milan (Italy). It aimed to present the results of the study "Resource efficiency in practice – Closing mineral cycles" commissioned by the DG Environment (European Commission). It focused on the good practices, which were identified as potential ways to reduce the nutrient loss at farm level and to close mineral cycles, based on the current state of nutrient saturation within the Lombardy region.

The aim of the regional conference in Murcia was to present the region-specific results from the project "Resource Efficiency in Practice – Closing Mineral Cycles." The most promising and cost-effective measures at the farm level to close mineral cycles and reduce resource and economic inefficiency from nutrient losses (N, P, K) were presented. The conference seeks to highlight farmers' experiences with nutrient management, as well as barriers which may prevent uptake of good practices.

The purpose of the SWITCH-ON Market Analysis Framework (MAF) is to provide developers with guidelines and supplementary resources to support the analysis of new and existing markets for SWITCH-ON products and services. The framework will equip developers with the necessary tools to critically evaluate the potential of identified markets for their products and services and will set the foundations for the development of an appropriate market entry strategy.

The Arctic Climate Change Emerging Leaders Fellowship (ACCEL), Barents Regional Youth Council, Emerging Leaders in Environmental and Energy Policy Network (ELEEP), Reykjavik University, and Youth Arctic Coalition convened a workshop as well as a question and answer session with Admiral Robert J. Papp, U.S. Special Representative for the Arctic and the top U.S. Government Arctic official. The session took place at the 2014 Arctic Circle Assembly on 31 October 2014. A video of the event is available online.

On 28 October 2014, Ulf Stein (Fellow at Ecologic Institute) presented his key insights on fish migration and protection as a speaker at the 6th Edition of the European River Restoration Conference held in Vienna from 27 until 29 October 2014. Entitled "Connecting River Restoration Thinking to Innovative River Management," the conference was organized jointly by the European Centre for River Restoration (ECRR) and the SEE River project. The presentation slides are available for download.

The regional conference “Closing the mineral cycle at farm level – Good practices to reduce nutrient loss in Southern and Eastern Ireland” took place on 28th October 2014 at the Killeshin Hotel, Portlaoise, Ireland. The aim of the conference was to present the results of the study “Resource efficiency in practice – Closing mineral cycles” commissioned by the DG Environment, European Commission.

Every year in October the European Environment Agency (EEA) publishes a "Trends and Projections in Europe" report assessing the self-reported progress of 33 European countries and the European Union (EU) in achieving their climate mitigation and energy policy objectives. These objectives include international commitments under the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol, as well as the EU's 2020 climate and energy targets. For the 2014 "Trends and projections in Europe" report, Ecologic Institute prepared complementary country profiles covering greenhouse gas and energy data and policies for each of the 28 EU Member States. The country profiles are available for download.

As part of its work under the European Topic Centre on Inland, Coastal, and Marine waters (ETC/ICM), Ecologic Institute supported the European Environment Agency (EEA) in an assessment of public participation processes in the context of the Water Framework Directive (WFD). This resulted in a report covering theoretical aspects of public participation as well as an analysis of 8 case studies from across the EU. The report was reviewed by a series of WFD experts from various EU Member States. The article is available for download.

This public lecture on the energy crisis in Ukraine was the major event during Adam Pearson's (Transatlantic Fellow at Ecologic Institute) five-week-stay at Dartmouth College. Over the extended visit, he also participated in and led discussions on related climate, energy, and arctic topics with academic groups and research initiatives on campus. The visit at Dartmouth College's John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding in Hanover, New Hampshire was supported by a grant from the Konrad von Moltke Fund.

The UN climate negotiations are currently working towards a new global climate agreement, to be concluded at the end of 2015 in Paris. Until then, a marathon of negotiation sessions is scheduled to take place. In the run-up to the third of four rounds of negotiations in October 2014 in Bonn and just a few weeks before the start of the 2014 climate summit in Lima, Peru (COP-22), a group of 30 interested experts came together at Ecologic Institute for a Climate Talk to take stock.

On 13 October 2014, the first in a series of discussions covering different aspects of Arctic science and policy during the Canadian chairmanship of the Arctic Council was held at the Embassy of Canada. Ecologic Institute plays an active role in organizing the series in partnership with the Embassy of Canada, Berlin, International Arctic Science Committee (IASC), Alfred-Wegener Institute Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), and Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS).