As it implements policy reforms, China needs think tanks to work across traditional divisions of government, contest received wisdom, and produce new ideas.  R. Andreas Kraemer of Ecologic Institute addressed the importance of environmental think tanks in jointly meeting global challenges at the conference on "Think Tanks in Global Comparison – Modes of Operations" convened by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, on 25 and 26 August 2010.

<p>&#13; "Greening Investment Standards for the Financial Sector" was the subject of a workshop report by R. Andreas Kraemer of Ecologic Institute to the conference on "Mobilising Private Capital to Reduce Climate Change: Instruments and Policies to Mobilise International Green Energy Investment Berlin".  The conference was hosted by the German Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation, and Nuclear Safety, an the KFW Entwicklungsbank in Berlin on 29 and 30 June 2010.</p>&#13;

<p>&#13; Hessen's State Ministry for Environment, Energy, Agriculture and Consumer Protection and its partners held a half-day conference on the themes of emissions trading and climate policy in the USA as part of a year-long series of events. Dominic Marcellino, Fellow, Ecologic Institute Washington, gave a presentation on the current political situation in the United States with respect to climate change.</p>&#13;

<p>&#13; The Political Science Department of the United States Naval Academy offers a course to 3rd and 4th year Political Science majors on Energy and Security. Dominic Marcellino, Fellow at Ecologic Institute, was invited to provide a guest lecture on the use of market mechanisms in climate change policy.</p>&#13;

Ecologic Institute supports the German Federal Ministry for the Environment (BMU) in the implementation of both the targets defined in the coalition agreement for the 17th federal election period and the targets under European law for the promotion of renewable energies in the electricity and heat sector. Ecologic Institute provides both legal and technical support with regard to upcoming comprehensive amendments of the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) and related statutory instruments, with respect to the production, processing and feed-in of biogas / biomethane, regarding the development and implementation of sustainability schemes for energetically used biomass, and with regard to the evaluation and further advancement of the Renewable Energies Heat Act.

<p>&#13; Civil society groups are spreading the word on the upcoming 2012 Earth Summit, a United Nations meeting on international environmental governance. Ecologic Institute’s Emily McGlynn stressed the importance of youth participation at a recent UNFCCC side event on preparation for the Earth Summit.</p>&#13;

<p>&#13; In a Faculty and Expert Seminar, R. Andreas Kraemer of Ecologic Institute delivered the Keynote Address to an audience of mainly US and Canadian university and college faculty.  The group travelled to Berlin and Brandenburg to study local, regional and national approaches to sustainability.  The Studienform Berlin organised the study tour as part of the Transatlantic Climate Bridge.</p>&#13;

<p> The Slovenian Government&#39;s annual Bled Strategic Forum promotes high-level dialogue among leaders on key issues facing Europe and the 21st Century world, allowing Europe to better use its strategic space and leverage, and builds political commitment to these strategies. At the 2010 forum, R. Andreas Kraemer of Ecologic Institute provided input and moderated the panel on &quot;The Water Challenge&quot; focusing on threats to and from the water environment, human security, cooperation, and the avoidance of international conflict.</p>

The implementation of Germany's highly effective Feed-in-Tariff model (FITM) for the promotion of renewable energy (RE) is a remarkable achievement given the rigid structure of the German political system. The many veto points in the political system cause certain policy inertia -Reformstau- in Germany, making comprehensive policy changes a rare occurrence. In this article, Prof. Dr. Christoph Stefes, Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute, addresses how Germany's FITM was nonetheless passed in the 1990s, leading to a boom for renewable energy in Germany.

This project is an important project of the European Commission for preparing its comprehensive adaptation strategy. It aims at evaluating water related vulnerability to climate change impacts and identifying adequate adaptation measures. It sheds light on vulnerability and adaptive capacity in different affected sectors and across Europe’s river basins. The project shall thereby support coherency, timeliness and effectiveness of climate change adaptation efforts throughout Europe.

<p>&#13; Tanja Srebotnjak represented Ecologic Institute at the largest gathering of statisticians and practitioners of statistics in North America, the Joint Statistical Meetings, which this year took place in the Olympic City of Vancouver, Canada. Dr. Srebotnjak presented a paper on small area estimation of local health effects and risk factors illustrating her modeling and validation framework for the prevalent lack of health care insurance in the US.</p>&#13;