As part of the project "Environmental Guidelines of German Arctic Policy" funded by the Federal Environment Agency, Ecologic Institute hosted the expert workshop "Environmental protection of the High North – How to protect the Arctic from afar?" on 24 October 2018 in Berlin. The aim of the workshop was to facilitate exchange and discussion on how observers of the Arctic Council can engage strategically and practically in the protection of the Arctic environment. The exchange with states active in the High North, indigenous communities, businesses, research and civil society produced solutions for a sustainable development in the Arctic that allows for the reconciliation of a wide spectrum of interests in the region. The focus was on climate change and air pollution control, shipping in the Arctic and sustainable tourism in the region.

On 29 May 2019, Doris Knoblauch and Linda Mederake, both scientific researchers at Ecologic Institute, were guest "professors" at the Nürti Üni, the pupils' university of the Nürtingen Primary School in Berlin Kreuzberg. They held a lecture on "Plastics Crisis – Advantages of Plastics and the Problems of Plastic Consumption".

The RECIPES website (REconciling sCience, Innovation and Precaution through the Engagement of Stakeholders) provides an overview of the project objectives, structure and partners as well as events and news related to relevant project results. Reports, policy briefs, factsheets, recommendations and newly developed tools for policy makers will be regularly promoted on the website. Ecologic Institute is responsible for the concept, design, programming and update of the website. User can directly subscribe for the mailing list.

How can innovation help Europe adapt to climate change? And how can Europe help innovators to turn their climate adaptation ideas into implemented, effective, and financially sustainable solutions? Ecologic Institute researchers presented answers from the BRIGAID project to these questions at the 2019 European Climate Change Adaptation Conference, in Lisbon (Portugal), from 29 to 31 May 2019.

"Sustainable Agriculture – Someone has to take the first step": Welcome to the second episode of the environment-focused podcast series "Knowledge for Future", produced by Ecologic Institute and detector.fm. Today organic products are all the rage, but long before the big supermarket chains added organic milk and co. to their product range, people in Germany were dedicated to biological, sustainable agriculture.

There are numerous regulatory approaches at the international, regional and national level regarding the handling of plastic products and plastic waste. What they all have in common is their limited effectiveness. Linda Mederake, Stephan Gürtler and Doris Knoblauch argue that this is partly due to the fact that at the international level a large number of binding agreements and voluntary initiatives have developed independently of one another and are therefore not coordinated in terms of content. The Plastics Atlas 2019 is available online.

The Baltic Sea Action Plan and the EU Water Framework Directive both require substantial additional reductions of nutrient loads (N and P) to the marine environment. Focusing on nitrogen, we present a widely applicable concept for spatially differentiated regulation, exploiting the large spatial variations in the natural removal of nitrate in groundwater and surface water. By targeting mitigation measures towards areas where nature’s own capacity for removal is low, spatially differentiated regulation can be more cost-effective than the traditional uniform regulation. We present a methodology for upscaling local modelling results on targeted measures at field scale to Baltic Sea drainage basin scale. The paper assesses the potential gain and discusses key challenges related to implementation of spatially differentiated regulation, including the need for more scientific knowledge, handling of uncertainties, practical constraints related to agricultural practice and introduction of co-governance regimes.

At the dialogue event "The River, the Waste and Me" by the Berlin initiative "Alles im Fluss" in cooperation with "Stadtgespräch Wasser bewegt Berlin" on water pollution control and waste on the banks, Linda Mederake, scientific researcher at Ecologic Institute, presented the project Plastic Pirates. In this citizen science project for children and teenagers, school classes and youth groups throughout Germany can collect data on the amount of plastic waste on and in German rivers and thereby become scientists themselves.

On 17 June 2019 the workshop "Federal and regional governments in dialogue on sustainable food systems. From individual projects to a holistic strategy?" took place at the EUREF Campus in Berlin with 30 participants. The aim of the event was to discuss how strategies could be developed that not only address the topic of sustainable nutrition in a politically comprehensive way, but which are also based on the numerous good individual initiatives and projects at the federal and regional level.

This project provides important input into the Commission report to the European Parliament and Council on the implementation of the National Emissions Ceilings (NEC) Directive (2016/2284/EU), which is due by 1 April 2020. Under the NEC Directive, Member States are required to provide the Commission and EEA with data on the negative impacts of air pollution upon ecosystems, which they collect from a network of monitoring sites representative of their different habitats and forest ecosystem types. This project analyses the submitted data – including on completeness and quality –and assesses how the ecosystem monitoring and reporting process could be improved for future reporting rounds.

This EFEX webinar explored the success of stakeholder participation in the National Energy and Climate Plans (NECP) preparation process as well as its scope, best practice examples and value added for EU climate policy. A panel of expert speakers – Elisa Martellucci and Agnese Ruggiero of Carbon Market Watch and David Donnerer of Energy Cities – drew on their experiences with the PlanUp project to discuss the EU perspective as well as the dialogues it organized between stakeholders and ministry officials. The online panel was moderated by Matthias Duwe, Head Climate at Ecologic Institute.

The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has contracted Ecologic Institute and its partner EMVIS Consultant Engineers to provide assistance related to the identification of opportunities for Nature Based Solutions for Water Security (NBS4WS) in Europe. As part of its work on water security in Europe, The Nature Conservancy is preparing two reports: Investing in Nature for European Water Security and Urban Water Blueprint for Europe.

The EU adopts essential climate issues – such as carbon taxation – by special legislative procedures. This means that the European Parliament is not an equal co-legislator and the Council decides by unanimous vote, providing each Member State with a veto. This is a problem because the urgency of climate action requires swift and bold EU action. EU climate action cannot afford a governance structure that allows one Member State to hold all others hostage in essential areas of climate action. A new Ecologic paper explores how to address this problem.

On 28 May 2019, Dr. Stephan Sina, Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute, moderated a panel discussion on the lessons Germany could learn from the experiences of other European countries regarding a climate change act. The panel was composed of Chris Stark from the UK Climate Change Committee, Petter Hojem from the Swedish Ministry of the Environment, and Dr. Dirk Weinreich from the German Federal Ministry of the Environment. The panel discussion was part of the event "A Climate Change Act for Germany - What can Germany learn from the experiences of other countries?" organised by the Stiftung Umweltenergierecht and the British Embassy in Berlin.

Bangladesh needs to turn its pledges into effective policy instrument to realize the promises about greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation made in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC). In that regard, analyzing the energy and climate policies of Bangladesh and consulting with the stakeholders from Bangladesh and other countries, Shafiqul Alam provides insights on the possible policy instrument for Bangladesh to achieve the target of NDC and raises some fundamental policy issues. His study is available for download.