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.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) should remain in place beyond 2012 and be improved to facilitate more meaningful participation by developing countries in climate mitigation efforts. This is the conclusion reached in an article written by, inter alia, Michael Mehling, President of Ecologic Institute Washington.

Vidaurre, Rodrigo and Isabelle Turcotte 2012: Results of the Stakeholder Consultation on Requirements for a Possible Environmental Risk and Hazard Classification System for Pharmaceuticals. Ecologic Institute, Swedish Environmental Research Institute, Institute for Social-Ecological research.

Actors from different levels of government have been the focus of this survey on adaptation to climate change, which was carried out as part of RADOST. Questions are explored, what would be possible climate impacts, what can be understood as adaptation measure on the Baltic coast, and who is responsible for the implementation of adaptation measures. The report is available for download.

The project aims to enhance transparency on voluntary sustainability standards and increase opportunities for sustainable trade. It addresses these challenges by collecting, organizing and disseminating information on voluntary sustainability standards and related research results in a web-based tool. This web-based tool called ITC Standards Map centralizes information such as the standards' content requirements, the related verification and certification mechanisms, product scope, market outreach and standards-related research results. The information is made accessible to producers, exporters, trade promotion organizations, trade support institutions, policy-makers, and intermediate private or public buyers.

In this Project, Ecologic Institute elaborates policy options for the development of a strategy to protect the Arctic environment for the German Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU). The project entails an analysis of the environmental situation and the legal framework for environmental protection and sustainable development in the Arctic as well as an identification of Germany’s interests regarding environmental protection in this region.