This policy handbook for the EU-Water Framework Directive (WFD) has been published as a 2nd, fully updated edition in 2006. It comprises 9 chapters from 37 authors – five of them members of the Ecologic Team. The handbook covers all steps of the WFD implementation, with topics ranging from the analysis of pressures and impacts to the selection of measures, and from the integration of nature conservation requirements to the designation of heavily modified water bodies. It aims to provide hands-on guidance on all aspects of the WFD’s implementation in Germany for policymakers, academic scholars and civil society actors.

On invitation of DG Economic and Financial Affairs and DG Environment, Ingo Bräuer, Fellow at Ecologic, gave a presentation on the use of Market Based Instruments in the field of nature conservation.

The project's objective is to identify optimal waste management strategies for three different European regions. A multidisciplinary (environmental, economic, social, legal) approach is applied in evaluating different strategies. Ecologic will cover the socio-economic assessment of the identified strategies.

EU Member States are increasingly using market-based instruments such as taxes, subsidies or tradable permits to conserve Biodiversity. Ecologic has been commissioned by DG Environment to analyse the current use of Market Based Instruments (MBIs) like taxes, fees and charges to protect biodiversity. Based on this, Ecologic collaborated with its project partners in preparing a report that evaluates the success and failure of these instruments and assesses their potential for wider use in different contexts in the future. The report is available for download.

The United Nations (UN) are in a crisis, not least because of their lack of democratic legitimacy: too many of the member countries are non-democratic, and internal procedures in the UN are unnecessarily closed to public debate and scrutiny. A panel of eminent experts led by Fernando Enrique Cardoso made proposals for reform. In a contribution to a book on the rule of international law in a globalised world, R. Andreas Kraemer assesses the panel's proposals.

Oekom research AG is one of the world's leading providers of information on the social and environmental performance of companies, sectors and countries. The scientifically based rating system for the assessment of businesses and their products, processes, services and business models is being constantly updated with the support of an independent advisory board, co-chaired by R. Andreas Kraemer of Ecologic.

Many Member States of the European Union have come up with programmes to foster Small and Medium Enterprises' (SME) compliance with environmental law or to help SME better their environmental performance. This is because SME playing a pre-eminent role in the economic structure of the European Union are a source of considerable impacts on the environment. This objective of this project is to gain an overview of those programmes in the Member States and to pick best practice cases.

The Università Luigi Bocconi organised a conference on behalf of the Milan municipality to analyse Milan's wastewater treatment system as regards sustainability issues, organisational models and future challenges. The conference took place on 4 May 2006. Researchers from around Europe presented five case studies on European experience with wastewater management in urban areas. Ecologic Fellow Nadine Herbke presented the results of the Berlin and Emscher case studies.

This project aimed at realising a comparative evaluation of the development of urban wastewater systems against the  background of the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD). This evaluation was based on five case studies undertaken as part of the project and discussed at an international conference in Milan on 4 May 2006. An expected result was to gain knowledge on the technological, economic, management and institutional consequences arising from a shift from an approach dominated by point-source emission standards to one focusing on the good ecological standards of water bodies. Ecologic undertook two of the case studies, one being on the Emscher Region and one on Berlin.

6 June 2006 marks the 20th anniversary of the founding of the German Federal Ministry of Environment. Martin Jaenicke, R. Andreas Kraemer, and Helmut Weidner co-authored a "Critical Congratulation from the Science Community" (in German only) looking at achievements, challenges, and future perspectives of environmental policy in Germany and beyond.

The use of public procurement policy to achieve sustainable development objectives has increased steadily over the past decade. Amongst the various "green procurement" initiatives, forestry is a sector which received much attention. However, unlike areas such as product safety or energy efficiency, the use of public procurement to enhance sustainable forest management (SFM) is extremely complex – largely because the elements of SFM are broad ranging, variable, and to some extent controversial.