Germany seems to be missing its climate protection targets for 2020 – can a climate protection law help avoid such failures in the future? Will the Climate Protection Plan 2050 and its sectoral goals be bindingly anchored in the law? Within the context of the Energy Future Exchange (EFEX) project, a round of international experts discussed these questions at the Climate Talk at Ecologic Institute in Berlin. Bringing in a transatlantic perspective, the discussion also touched on the climate protection frameworks currently in place in California and Mexico.

The G7 and G20 conferences are two multilateral fora for mutual exchange between the world largest economies. For the European Union, the congresses are particularly important to push for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to enhance international environmental protection. In this project, Ecologic Institute supports the European Commission in strengthening the voice of the EU in the negotiations. The team provides expert advice for EU position development on resource efficiency, circular economy, marine waste, plastics and sustainable finance.

This book chapter explores how policies and policy-making perform to support climate change adaptation. It is part of the book: Adapting to Climate Change in Europe: Exploring Sustainable Pathways - From Local Measures to Wider Policies which is a scientific synthesis of a four-year project on adaptation activities in Europe (BASE). This book aims at ensuring sustainable solutions in adaptation to climate change. This chapter reflects on different tools which can support decision making for climate adaptation and that have been presented in other chapters of the book. It also discusses how current adaptation measures operate to enhance the capacity to respond to climate change impacts in a coherent manner across sectors. Ecologic Institute's Jenny Tröltzsch and Katriona McGlade contributed to this chapter.

This book chapter provides an overview of climate change adaptation across Europe, from an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspective, drawing on key findings from case study-based research on local climate change impacts and adaptation solutions, including an analysis of participatory, economic, and sociopolitical approaches, methodologies, and tools. Ecologic Institute's Jenny Tröltzsch contributed to this chapter.

Within the Paris Agreement, the European Union (EU) committed to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions produced in the EU by 20% between 1990 and 2020, and by at least 40% between 1990 and 2030, with the aim of keeping the global temperature rise well below 2°C. In order to achieve this, Europe has to invest approximately 179 billion € additionally per year. The post-2020 EU budget could contribute to this sum and help to engage private investors. In this regard, the Ecologic Institute analyzes the EU Commission’s proposals on the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) for 2021-2027.

Building on the idea - namely that an open and informed dialogue on complex topics such as the bioeconomy and engaging with variety of stakeholders and the general public may bring the concept of the bioeconomy closer to the society - BioSTEP experimented with different participatory tools including workshops, living lab activities, and exhibitions. This report describes the lessons learned from BioSTEP’s engagement activities and provides recommendations for future EU research.

This summary pocket book presents key recommendations gathered in the project RECREATE regarding future research and innovation needs in "Societal Challenge 5: Climate Action, Environment, Resource Efficiency and Raw Materials". The results include very concrete recommendations on selected topics, overarching recommendations which shall help integrating the different research areas better and recommendations regarding the use of various methodologies. The summary pocket book is available for download.

In this report the authors, which include Stephanie Wunder, Keighley McFarland and Dr. Martin Hirschnitz-Garbers from Ecologic Institute, provide an overview of the most relevant EU policies and instruments with an impact on food waste generation and/or prevention. The report explains the relevance of the different policy areas at EU level and identifies the gaps, overlaps and unintended effects of EU regulation. Finally, it identifies potential opportunities for improvement in each policy area. The report is available for download.

In April 2018, the second cycle of the Forum "Fish Protection and Downstream Migration" ended, which was devoted, among other things, to improving the implementation of measures. In this article, the authors, among them Dr. Ulf Stein of Ecologic Institute, summarize the intensive discourse between all stakeholders over the past six years and present the resulting twelve recommendations. The recommendations describe how to proceed with this topic in the future and how to avoid potential conflicts in practice. The article is published in WasserWirtschaft, Issue 06/2018, Springer Vieweg.

Instances of extreme temperatures and hurricanes are increasing. Polar ice masses are withdrawing further, climate change is threatening mankind. At the 19th Poetry Festival Berlin, poets talked with Daniela Seel (editor and poet) and Arne Riedel (Ecologic Institute) in a "Poetry Talk: World Climate Summit of Poetry". The discussion touched upon the potential of poetry to connect people emotionally to climate change and how it can generate attention for this topic.

Ecologic Institute's Elizabeth Zelljadt explained emissions trading systems (ETS) at a workshop on carbon pricing in Latin America and the Caribbean hosted by the environmental advocacy group World Wildlife Fund (WWF). As several Latin American countries are implementing carbon pricing policies – from carbon taxes applied to fossil fuels to carbon markets similar to the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) – Latin American WWF leaders brought their members together with external carbon pricing experts for a workshop on measures to price carbon around the world. The international group of participants, which included officials from the Mexican government and the United Nations, also addressed the status of global negotiations around this issue.

From 11 until 14 June 2018 transitions scholars and stakeholders from around the world met for the 9th International Sustainability Transitions (IST) conference in Manchester (United Kingdom). Dr. Grit Martinez of Ecologic Institute spoke in a dialogue session about cultural conventions, system reconfigurations and transitions.

Experts from different countries showed with illustrative examples how much the success of campaigns against food waste depends on strategic planning, identification of regional food waste patterns, evaluation of results and attracting media attention.

The national and international political agenda shows that resource conservation is a central task for environmental policy: In Germany, Europe and globally, there are political programmes and strategies aimed at fostering sustainable resource use. In five theses, this brochure from the SimRess project shows that an integrative and systemically designed resource policy contributes to achieving the goals of resource protection and climate protection. The study was carried out by Ecologic Institute with Martin Hirschnitz-Garbers and Susanne Langsdorf as co-authors. The brochure is available for download.

Addressing climate change and natural resource depletion has been key to the international and national sustainability agenda for almost 30 years. Despite existing efforts, global CO2 emissions and raw material use levels continue to grow. This seems to suggest the need for more systemic approaches in environmental policy. The authors, among them Ecologic Institute's Dr. Martin Hirschnitz-Garbers, call upon policy makers to integrate rebound mitigation strategies and move beyond exclusively improving efficiency to tackling structural and behavioural changes. The article is available for download.