This article analyses the legal form and nature of the Paris Agreement. Dr. Ralph Bodle and Prof. Sebastian Oberthür argue that the Paris Agreement constitutes an international treaty whose prescriptive and precise legal obligations are primarily procedural and focused on 'nationally determined contributions' (on mitigation) and the core transparency framework.

Rouillard, J., Tröltzsch, J., Lago, M., Markandya, A., Sainz de Murieta, E., Galarraga, I. (2016). Distributional objectives and non-monetary metrics. FP7 Econadapt project, Deliverable 2.3.

Tröltzsch, Jenny; Benjamin Boteler; Katrina Abhold (2016): A Global Analysis of Adaptation Case Studies: State of the Art. Poster.

From 3 until 12 May 2016, the 15th ICAP Training Course on Emissions Trading brought together climate policy professionals from Latin America to learn about emissions trading as a tool for climate protection and to discuss the options of implementing such systems in Latin America. The São Paulo course was the fifteenth of its kind and continues a series of past ICAP events held around the world since 2009. 25 mid-career professionals from seven Latin American countries attended the course, which was facilitated by Benjamin Görlach and Pedro Barata led the course.

As part of the Leverhulme Trust funded project on IWRM and climate change adaptation, two workshops were held in May 2016 in Dhaka and Khulna to draw lessons from the Bangladesh experience and share experiences from other national contexts. Dr. Josselin Rouillard from Ecologic Institute presented the results of his research on IWRM and public participation in France.

The issue of closing mineral cycles was analyzed in eight European regions and the results are presented in the report "Resource Efficiency in Practice – Closing Mineral Cycles". The authors of BIO IS, Ecologic Institute, AMEC, Danish Technical University, University of Milano and LEI, identified measures that support the closing of mineral cycles within the study regions. For each region, practical and strategic options to reduce the nutrient surplus further were derived. The report is available for download.

In the last of our four-part webinar series on emissions trading systems (ETS), moderated by Ecologic Institute's Fellow Elizabeth Zelljadt, guest speaker Franz Litz explains the unique legal challenges of establishing and implementing regulatory ETSs. He discusses examples of national and international law to illustrate legal considerations for future ETS development.

A new report by the Ecologic Institute makes concrete proposals for reforming the EU Effort Sharing Decision (ESD). A reduction target for 2050 as well as a robust review and target adjustment mechanism are highlighted as the main reform proposals. The report also touches on proposals for enhancing the flexibility of the ESD. The report is available for download.

On 21 April 2016, the final conference of the EU-FP7 funded project “POLIMP” took place in Brussels. How can climate policies be designed, what impacts do they have and what other options are there? These are important questions to stakeholders and policy-makers. The project POLIMP aims at making answers to these issues more easily accessible and understandable. To this end, POLIMP examines knowledge gaps for different policy and decision making levels and covers these with the help of existing research results.

The Ecologic Institute, together with a consortium, conducted a study on wildlife crime, which gives an overview over the state of wildlife crime in Europe. As as a basis for this study, in-depth analyses were carried out for five EU member states. Ecologic Institute conducted the in-depth analysis of wildlife crime in Germany. The analysis concludes that Germany is not a main destination for illegal wildlife products from iconic species, but still an important destination for live animals like reptiles for the pet market. It is also an important transit country for ivory and other illegally traded animal parts from Western and Central Africa with East and South-East Asia as the main region of destination. The studies were compiled on behalf of the European Parliament and are available for download.

On 19 April 2016, Stephan Sina and Christiane Gerstetter, Senior Fellows at Ecologic Institute, presented a study on wildlife crime to the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) of the European Parliament in Brussels. The study was compiled by a consortium lead by Ecologic Institute and published recently on the European Parliament's website. The presentation is available for download.

Increasing material use efficiency is important to mitigate future supply risks and minimize environmental impacts associated with the production of materials. The policy mix presented in this paper aims to contribute to reducing the use of virgin metals in the EU by 80% by 2050 without significantly shifting burdens to other material resources, the environmental or other parts of the world. The article, which was written with the collaboration of Dr. Martin Hirschnitz-Garbers (Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute), is available for download.

The aim of this workshop is to identify and discuss challenges, opportunities, and policy gaps surrounding the development of bioeconomy strategies across Europe. The outcome of this process will be a list of targeted policy recommendations for the (further) development of balanced and informed bioeconomy strategies at the regional, national and European level.

An increasing number of countries and regions around the world are developing and implementing emissions trading as a way of putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions. This knowledge package gives an overview of such systems, compares design features and giving an outlook on future developments.

Climate change and other pressures are impacting the environment and water resources in the Mediterranean, requiring plans for how to adapt the management of affected river basins and their water resources to changing future conditions. To address this challenge, a series of workshops organized by Ecologic Institute and local case study partners (CREAF, CyI, INRGREF and IzVRS) were held in March and April 2016 across the Mediterranean as part of the EU-funded BeWater project to gain stakeholder input for further developing tailored river basin adaptation plans.