Bowyer, Catherine; Peter Hjerp; Alexander Neubauer 2006: The Proposed Directive on Waste. An assessment of the Impact Assessment and the Implications of the Integration of the Hazardous Waste Directive into the existing Waste Framework Directive. Brussels.

While trade sustainability impact assessments (trade SIAs) have generated much useful information about the potential impacts of trade liberalisation, they have made very limited impact on trade negotiations, which generate unresolved controversy, if not deadlock. This paper contends that one reason for this is that trade SIAs do not explicitly recognise the motives for countries to resist free trade.

While Germany has introduced a comprehensive ecological tax reform (ETR) in 1999, Poland has taken only first steps into this direction. In order to intensify the exchange between German and Polish experts from politics, research and NGOs, the Polish Ministry of the Environment together with the German Ministry of the Environment organised a workshop in Warsaw during which the design of the German ecological tax reform and its implications were discussed. Helen Lückge, Fellow at Ecologic, presented the economic implications of the German ETR.

The second transnational conference of the WaterCost project as part of the Intereg North Sea Region focused on the issue of cost-effectiveness analysis and how it to apply it to groundwater and water supply issues. Benjamin Görlach gave a presentation on the role of cost- benefit considerations in the implementation process of the Water Framework Directive. He concluded that since there is only patchy data on costs and benefits, and elaborated on the role of the AquaMoney project in addressing this gap.

Between 1990 and 2000 alone, more than 800,000 hectares were built on in Europe. This phenomenon is due to changing lifestyles more than increased population. The amount of space consumed per person has more than doubled over the past 50 years. Today, more than a quarter of the EU's territory has been directly affected by urban sprawl, according to a study by the European Environment Agency, which also suggests potential policies to combat the trend. R. Andreas Kraemer, Director Ecologic, was consulted as an external expert throughout the development of the report.

How can the effectiveness of environmental policies be assessed in retrospect? Have the stated targets of environmental policies been achieved, and if so, was it because of the policies or because of other factors? Have targets been achieved at proportionate costs, or could there have been cheaper options of reaching them? These and other questions on ex-post policy evaluation were discussed at an expert workshop convened by the European Environment Agency and the Environment Agencies of Denmark, the Netherlands and the UK. Benjamin Görlach gave an introduction to cost-effectiveness analysis as an evaluation tool, and presented experiences with ex-post cost-effectiveness analyses of environmental policies in Europe.

This OECD-report analyses selected public expenditure programmes supporting environmental investments in water supply and sanitation in four OECD countries (Austria, Belgium, France and the German New Länder) with the goal of illustrating a variety of possible institutional arrangements for the management of water sector public expenditure programmes in transition economies.

Lucha, Christine 2006: Optimisation of the share of renewable energies in electricity systems in the European Union. Cornerstones of an alternative political and institutional scenario. Fachbereich 3: Mathematik / Naturwissenschaften, Universität Koblenz-Landau, Koblenz.

This CTI Capacity Building Semniar brought together about 75 key persons from politics, business, non-governmental organisations, research institutes and think tanks from Central and Eastern European Countries, the former Soviet Union and Mongolia as well as OECD countries. Participants were given the opportunity to discuss and develop concrete projects in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They were encouraged to present first project ideas and were given the opportunity to meet experts from OECD countries to share their experiences and ideas concerning the economic potential and benefits of climate change policies. It was the 7th event of the series of CTI Capacity Building Seminars.

The mission of the Climate Technology Initiative (CTI) is to bring countries together to foster international co-operation in the accelerated development and diffusion of climate-friendly and environmentally sound technologies and practices. The promotion of technology transfer under the Kyoto Protocol as incorporated in the Marrakech Accords is at the core of CTI's work. Ecologic supports the organisation of a seminar that is part of CTI. It is the 7th event of a series sponsored by the German Federal Environment Agency.

The environment is a cross-cutting theme in the European funding policies. Which are the environmental and agricultural funding opportunities for 2007-2013, and what are the consequences for landscape change and sustainable development? Rainer Müssner in collaboration with Katrina Marsden gave a presentation focusing on these issues at the 14th International Symposium on Problems of Landscape – Ecological Research.

The IPDEV research project partners met in London at the two-day workshop "Intellectual Property Rights and Sustainable Development". Together with a high level group of experts and stakeholders, the project results and policy recommendations were discussed. Stephanie Schlegel from Ecologic Institute presented the findings on "Geographical Indications and their contribution to environmental quality and linkages to social & cultural issues". Her presentation is available for download. Benjamin Görlach and Dora Schaffrin spoke about the international Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.

The process of European integration has given rise to a new object of study – European society. Several old questions concerning citizenship, democracy, government and institutions must be raised anew, this time at the European level. These are not only academic issues, but also major political concerns at European and member state level.

In the end of 2005 the parties to the Kyoto Protocol convened to decide on a number of operational aspects of the international climate regime. More importantly, they also agreed to launch consultations on future mitigation commitments for the period after 2012, when the current "Kyoto targets" expire. Dr. Camilla Bausch and Michael Mehling analyse the outcome of the meeting in an article and discuss the summit’s significance as a first step in the further evolution of the international climate regime.

The Free University of Berlin organised a conference on behalf of The Permanent European conference for the study of the rural landscape (PECSRL) from 4 until 9 September 2006, focusing on the theme: European rural future: Landscape as an Interface. Rainer Müssner from Ecologic gave a presentation about the importance of landscape issues in public policies. This presentation focused on the following key questions: Is "landscape" a priority issue on the national / European policy agenda?, do we have a coherent "landscape policy"? and what can be done to increase the political "weight" of landscape issues?