The EU recovery and resilience facility marks progress but has some shortcomings in climate policy, argues Nils Meyer-Ohlendorf in his OpEd for the Tagesspiegel. A bigger role for the European Parliament in the distribution of recovery funds is important – for climate protection and democracy in the EU. The facility's spending rules must be clarified.

The multifunctional character of nature-based solutions enables them to provide responses to both social and environmental challenges. This policy brief provides gaps and opportunities to sustainable urban development through NBS at local and national as well as EU and international level. It also analyses local needs from the European and international levels.

Scaling up climate smart soil management requires addressing a range of barriers, with one of the key barriers being the availability and access to the right kind of knowledge. A new report from Ecologic Institute, prepared under the CIRCASA project, shows the importance of empowering farmers and other stakeholders through effective knowledge creation and exchange.

Nils Meyer-Ohlendorf comments on the EU corona aid package in Tagesspiegel Background. He calls for the EU Parliament to have a greater say in the matter and criticises that the aid programme is not sufficiently linked to the goal of climate neutrality by 2050.

This podcast explores different aspects of urban nature through stories of innovators from across Europe who use their passion and creativity to make cities green.

This short study gives a broad overview of the Commission’s proposal for the new Multiannual Financial Framework and the Next Generation EU program and their proposed climate investment shares.

This report analyses two specific activities within the REFRESH project: First, the dissemination of the Framework for Action ("Blueprint") that helps national governments to build Voluntary Agreements with the relevant stakeholders in the sector to reduce food loss and waste and second, work with Standardisation Bodies, specifically barcode standards used by retailers.

The final results brochure of the REFRESH project provides an overview of the work undertaken within the project including key insights and links to the results that are available online at the REFRESH project website.

For energy-intensive industries, the transformation towards a climate-neutral form of production is a particular challenge, not only because of their large carbon footprints, but also because they are embedded in value chains that are still predominantly fossil-based. However, they too are part of the effort to reach climate neutrality by 2050 and at the same time accelerate the transition by providing competitive clean technology solutions. This study explores how European energy-instensive industries can transition to a climate-neutral economy while maintaining, and ideally improving, its global competitiveness. It investigates different technology options, policy designs and financial instruments.

The FIThydro Policy Brief presents summaries of selected key outputs from the H2020 FIThydro project, which are relevant for policy makers, managers and operators involved in the commissioning and operation of hydropower plants.

This study examines approaches of a set of European Union member states to pursue a coordinated approach to climate change adaptation (CCA) policy. It specifically addresses the co-ordination approaches that the selected countries use for the development and implementation of their national CCA policies in the immediate period following the publication of the EU's 2013 Adaptation Strategy.

This commentary contributes to the discussion on the recently released Draft Guidelines on Uniform Framework for Extended Producers Responsibility (EPR) by India's Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. The authors argue that the draft guidelines fall short of fulfilling its purpose for three reasons. Basing their recommendations on learnings from experiences of developed countries with mature EPR ecosystems and contextualizing the same for ground realities of India, authors provide a 6-point agenda to address the issues raised.

A delegation of Vietnamese government representatives took part in a study tour on "Air Quality Management in Germany" in Berlin from 24 to 30 November 2019. The Independent Institute for Environmental Issues organized the study tour together with Ecologic Institute on behalf of GIZ.

This report prepared by Valerie Fogleman with assistance of Ecologic Institute examines and analyses financial security for liabilities under the Environmental Liability Directive (ELD) in Member States in which it is voluntary and those in which it is mandatory (the Czech Republic, Ireland, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain). It focuses on insurance because the vast majority of Member States have not introduced mandatory financial security for ELD liabilities.

The vade mecum on complaint-handling and citizen engagement delivers one of the nine actions in the European Commission's 2018 environmental compliance assurance action plan. It was prepared between May 2018 and May 2019 by Directorate-General Environment of the European Commission together with the Ecologic Institute and individual experts nominated by members of the Environmental Compliance and Governance Forum.