Werner, Beate; Robert Collins et. al. 2012: Towards efficient use of water resources in Europe. EEA Report | No 1/2012, European Environment Agency, Copenhagen.

Statistical measurement of income poverty as a relative concept is very specific to the EU. Yet besides this classical case there are various factors that make us think further about the relative nature of poverty. Some of the examples refer to statistics on how national income is distributed throughout the society, how living expenses differ across the countries as well as rural and urban areas, and how differently Europeans feel about poverty in their cities.

EU statistics depict poverty in a particular way, which goes beyond the income issues. At risk-of-poverty-or-social-exclusion indicator is an ample example of it. To understand why, one should know what is the rationale behind it and how important it is, that in the EU poverty and social exclusion go hand in hand.

EU progress towards sustainable development goes side by side with fostering green growth. Here resource productivity has an important role to play. Yet its measurement could have some interpretation pitfalls and it is important to be aware of them.

This video is one out of four that were developed and produced within the project EU sustainable development indicators: video production, co-ordinated by the Ecologic Institute.

In a blog post on the US State Department's "Our Planet" blog, Dominic Marcellino, Fellow at Ecologic Institute US, relates the story of how the village of Ascha in Bavaria went from being completely energy dependent to producing over 100% of its electricity and 50% of its heating needs from renewable energy.

Civil society is a key factor in ensuring the successful implementation of Germany’s energy transformation and the country's transition towards a low-carbon economy. Different stakeholders already engage in a variety of climate protection related activities and issues today. These stakeholders include traditional local initiatives, which work on specific projects, and innovative, web-based activist groups as well as NGOs, which cover a broad range of issues and engage in large national campaigns. Ecologic Institute, in collaboration with the Wuppertal Institute, compiled an overview of the status quo of German civil society activity in climate protection, analysing the current focus and identifying the main challenges going forward.

The EU-funded research project "Climate Change, Hydro-conflicts and Human Security" (CLICO) investigates how climate change influences water, human security, and conflicts in the Mediterranean, Middle East, and the Sahel region. Ecologic Institute recently published a working paper written by Elizabeth Tedsen that examines current initiatives of the European Union and United Nations relating to these themes of climate, water, human security, and conflict.

Two thousand and eleven has proven to be yet another exciting and intellectually enriching year for our institute. In our sixteenth year of researching and shaping European environmental policy, we not only continued to provide high quality and innovative expertise to the European community, but we also grew consistently – both in our diversified staff and our competencies. Our Project Handbook 2011 is available for download.