The current economic crisis represents an opportunity for economic and ecological sustainable development. There exist chances for the short term as well as for the long term. Although, it should not be ignored that the crisis also contains risks for sustainable development.

<p>&#13; At the sixth and final EPOS Network Meeting that took place on the 15th and-16th October 2009 in Budapest, Doris Knoblauch presented the analysis of the stakeholder participation processes that took place within the federal or national sustainable development strategies in five European countries. The project revealed that a major challenge was how to deal with all the input generated through the participation processes.</p>&#13;

Environmental policy integration, i.e. the integration of environmental concerns into other policy fields, is becoming increasingly important. But how does environmental policy integration relate to different modes of governance? In their article, Ingmar von Homeyer and Doris Knoblauch present the results of the EPIGOV project.

<p>&#13; The potential for renewable energies is greater in the US than in Germany, and foundations can do much to unlock growth, help create jobs, stabilise communities, and phase out fossil energies and atomic power.  R. Andreas Kraemer of Ecologic Institute presented the German experience at the EGA Fall Retreat in Anchorage, Alaska, on 2 October 2009.</p>&#13;

The greatest concern in Germany regarding climate change is that developments around the world might harm political stability in other countries, result in a loss of trade, induce migration, and ultimately cause conflict. In this article, R. Andreas Kraemer from the Ecologic Institute describes how Germany deals with this issue by proactively developing new energy solutions, setting effective energy policies domestically, and promoting good climate policy abroad.

The Yearbook Ecology 2010 has been published at the beginning of September 2009. Ecologic Institute is one of the institutes supporting the yearbook and contributed three chapters on ecological transformation, water and oil to this year's edition.

In this book chapter, the authors discuss linkages between the environmental crisis, in particular climate change, and the financial and economic crisis. They argue that both crises have at least one cause in common: patterns of production and consumption that are unsustainable from both an ecological and social point of view.

Does water provide occasions for conflicts or does water become the conflict material when social control mechanisms fail or are developed insufficiently or badly? Are water conflicts perhaps provoked to conceal this weakness? How does good Water Governance look and which positive effects can it bring? Nicole Kranz, R. Andreas Kraemer and Grit Martinez of Ecologic Institute discuss these questions in a chapter of the Jahrbuch Ökologie 2010.

In this book chapter, Sascha Müller-Kraenner raises whether we are facing an increasing number of conflicts on oil resources in the future. He argues that conflicts will not arise over the resource itself, but rather when climate change induces large flows of environmental refugees.

<p>&#13; In the context of the Coordination Action INNOVA-MED, an international conference took place on innovative processes and practices for wastewater treatment and re-use in the Mediterranean region. Eleftheria Kampa, Senior Fellow with the Ecologic Institute, gave a lecture on the constraints to the broader application of treatment and reuse technologies in Mediterranean Partner Countries of North Africa and Middle East.</p>&#13;

<p>&#13; From 30 August to 5 September 2009, the Foundation of German Business in cooperation with RWE organized a week-long summer academy for its scholarship holders on the present and future systems of energy supply. Benjamin Görlach, economist at Ecologic, gave a presentation on past experiences with, the current state of and the future outlook on the European Emissions Trading Scheme, one of the major EU climate policy instruments.</p>&#13;

This article explores options for linking emissions trading systems. Combining markets could have many positive benefits (including reducing the costs of compliance), but there are drawbacks. In the short term, however, direct bilateral linkages will be difficult, and achieving the EU-objective of OECD-wide emissions trading by 2015 is therefore ambitious. International negotiations will overcome some of the barriers to linkages and expedite the integration of carbon markets. Michael Mehling of the Ecologic Institute in Washington, DC co-authored this article.