Fifteen participants from different parts of Mexico who are spending a year in Germany with support from the "International Leadership Training (ILT)" programme in order to learn conceptual, holistic and anticipatory thought for sustainable business development, took part in the course, carried out at the International Education Center (IBZ) in Mannheim from 7 to 9 December 2012. Michael Mehling, President of the Ecologic Institute in Washington DC, delivered the course contents, drawing on training material developed previously for a project commissioned by the Academy of International Cooperation (AIZ).

The European Union-funded project DEMEAU kicked off on 8 and 9 November 2012 at Dunea, the water utility of The Hague and its surrounding area. This event marked the beginning of a three-year demonstration of promising technologies that tackle emerging pollutants in water and wastewater.

On 22 November 2012, Ecologic Institute organized a side-event entitled ‘European Innovation for Sustainable Water Management: Users meet Researchers’ at the IWRM Karlsruhe 2012. The event presented five European research projects and their innovative outputs, covering the topics of sustainable urban water management and the adaptation of freshwater ecosystem management to climate change. Ulf Stein and Johanna von Toggenburg organized the side-event as part of WaterDiss2.0, a project within the 7th European Union-funded Framework Programme, which supports research projects in the water sector along with the transfer of their results to intended users, thereby linking science, policy, and practice.

Mainstream economic indicators still dominate practical policy making. In this journal article, Lucas Porsch explains how the connection of sustainability measures and these mainstream indicators can be a tool for policy makers to understand and manage trade-offs between different sustainability categories.

From 23 until 26 October 2012 the conference 'Taking stock' on the future of the EU Common Fisheries Policy was held in Lübeck as part of a series of seminars for European journalists. The conference was organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network (EJN) in collaboration with the Ecologic Institute.

Bilateral cooperation with the USA is key for achieving the long-term goal of a global carbon market. This projects aimed to support a focused dialogue on aspects of climate change, in particular emissions trading, by providing background information and continuous reporting on current developments, as well as by supporting transatlantic communication and cooperation.

At a special event, the "Climate Talk" series starred Jeffrey Ball, Scholar–in–Residence at Stanford University and former Environment Editor at the Wall Street Journal; Enno Harks, Senior Political Advisor with BP; and Dr. Petri Hakkarainen, Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS). The event featured a truly transatlantic exchange on the German "Energiewende". It was moderated by Dr. Camilla Bausch of the Ecologic Institute.

The interdisciplinary research project "European Union Action to Fight Environmental Crime" (EFFACE) assesses the impacts of environmental crime as well as effective and feasible policy options for combatting it, with a focus on the EU. The project is funded under the 7th Research Framework Programme of the EU (FP7). Ecologic coordinates the work of 11 European universities and think tanks involved in the project.