China is increasingly at the centre of discussions about climate policy, as its government is designing a nationwide greenhouse gas emission trading system (ETS) to be implemented in 2017. The European Union (EU) is supporting this effort by sharing expertise about and experiences from Europe's ETS – the world's biggest and longest-running carbon market – with Chinese experts and policymakers. China is already home to several pilot ETS in various provinces, which constitute active carbon markets from which to gain experiences that can inform the future national programme.

Offsetting is seen as a mechanism that can contribute to curb the growing emissions from the aviation sector. This report investigates the way air carriers currently engage in offsetting, with a focus on the offset project types, credits, and entities involved. It consolidates evidence of offsetting practices from over 30 air carriers. The report is available for download.

This paper presents a collection of six essays, in which climate policy experts express the different views on the EU crisis from Berlin, Brussels, Budapest, Lisbon, London and Warsaw. The paper is available for download.

On 14 October 2016, the documentary film "Soils2Sea: Reducing nutrient loadings into the Baltic Sea" premiered in Poland. Developed and produced by Dr. Grit Martinez (Ecologic Institute) and Anne Berrini (berrini films) with support from Dr. Przemyslaw Wachniew (AGH University of Science and Technology Krakow), the movie illustrates the societal story of implementing the EU's nitrate directive at regional realities in the EU member states, particularly in the Kocinka catchment area in south central Poland. The 35-minute film will be available soon on Ecologic Institute's website.

From 4 until 6 September 2016 the Estuarine & Coastal Sciences Association (ECSA) held its 56th multidisciplinary research conference entitled "Coastal systems in transition from a 'natural' to an 'anthropogenically modified' state" in Bremen (Germany). Dr. Grit Martinez of Ecologic Institute and Prof. Paolo Ciavola of the University of Ferrara hosted a special session on "Practical illustration of the human dimension in coastal systems and its drivers for change". Presenters from the FP7-Project RISC-KIT highlighted the state of the art of their interdisciplinary research on reducing human risk in coastal areas which was complimented by further participants from other European and world-wide research projects. The presentation slides are available for download.

On the occasion of the US release of Michael McCarthy's "The Moth Snowstorm" on 3 October 2016, NYU Washington, DC, the Ecologic Institute and the New York Review of Books hosted a reading and discussion on joy, nature and the 21st-century city with Michael McCarthy, three-time Environment Journalist of the Year in the UK and author of The Moth Snowstorm, with special guests Jann Rosen-Queralt, artist and art instructor at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA); and Dr. Sabine O'Hara, Dean of CAUSES (College of Agriculture, Urban Sustainability & Environmental Sciences) at University of the District of Columbia. Brendan O’Donnell moderated the evening.

The Brexit, migration, the Euro crisis, continued economic malaise, and the rise of EU-sceptical parties and nationalist sentiment across Europe – the European Union (EU) is in turbulence. In a new paper Ecologic Institute analyses how the concurrent crises could affect EU climate and energy policy. The paper is available for download.

The Paris Agreement requires Parties to scale up their commitments every five years, i.e., with each consecutive "nationally determined contribution" (NDC). The recent proposal of the EU Commission for an Effort Sharing Regulation is essential for the EU to meet this obligation. The proposal, however, does not support adequately continuous scaling up of the EU greenhouse gas reduction targets. A new paper from Ecologic Institute discusses ways in which the Effort Sharing Regulation could support the scaling up of EU climate targets. The paper is available for download.

A consortium including Ecologic Institute has been commissioned by the European Commission to provide support in the evaluation of the contribution of Rural Development Programmes (RDPs) to the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and Floods Directive (FD).

This project oversees the organization of workcamps for German youth interested in green professions during vacations in 2016-2018. Participation in the one week long vocational camps in Wangelin, Mecklenburg is free of charge. Themes of the workcamps include the construction of mudbrick buildings, murals, ecologically-oriented architecture, clay ovens, upcycling, renewable energy and organic gardening. Registration to the workcamps in 2018 is now open.

On 5 December 2016, World Soil Day, an EU Soil stakeholders' Conference took place in Brussels. The conference aimed at raising awareness about the importance of soils and the ecosystem services that they deliver, and to contribute to the implementation of the EU Soil Thematic Strategy. The proceedings are available for download.

How have stakeholders and citizens participated in the development, implementation and monitoring of regional bioeconomy strategies? How has the involvement of stakeholders and citizens affected the strategies' development, implementation and monitoring? What are good practice examples of stakeholder and citizen participation in national and regional bioeconomy strategies? These and other questions are addressed in this report on regional bioeconomy strategies across Europe, focused on four regional case studies: Scotland, South-West Netherlands, Saxony-Anhalt and Veneto. Ecologic Institute was tasked with researching the Regional Innovation Strategy (RIS) in Saxony-Anhalt (Germany). The report is available for download.

CIRCULAR IMPACTS will assist the EU and its policy makers in realizing the transition from its current predominantly linear economy to a circular economy, by establishing a flexible and accessible evidence base with concrete data on macro-economic, societal, environmental and labour market impacts of this transition, and by adding relevant knowledge to that evidence base. For this purpose a web platform will be designed, which facilitates easy access to data repositories and fills up the existing knowledge gap in the European Commission’s impact assessments by mapping the benefits of a circular economy for both environment and economy. Furthermore, these identified benefits should convince member states to implement the required changes in order to 'close the loop' in the context of the European Semester.

Dooley, Elizabeth (Hg.) 2016: Closing the Mineral Cycles at Farm Level. Good Practices to Reduce Nutrient Loss in the Weser-Ems Region (Germany).

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.