Floods have caused substantial economic damage in recent years in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. The costs of the 2002 Elbe flood alone exceeded 10 billion Euro. Thirty experts from science and public administration gathered at the Federal Environment Agency in Berlin on 10 May 2005 to discuss the role of economic instruments for flood management and the economic assessment of flood management strategies. In his lecture, Benjamin Görlach presented some selected examples of flood management in Europe and discussed the use of economic appraisal tools in the different countries.

The Austrian Water and Waste Management Association (ÖWAV) organised the ÖWAV-Forum 2005 on "Water Sector and Politics – Structures, Controls and Financing". The aim of the conference was to discuss the future of the Austrian water sector, in particular the new legal, economic and environmental regulations. R. Andreas Kraemer presented the trends at European level and their potential effects on the municipal water sector.

The challenge of developing robust methodologies to undertake ex ante and/or ex post sustainability assessments of trade policies remains largely unmet. In cooperation with further members of the CAT-E network Ecologic analyses and develops methodological approaches for sustainable impact assessments for specific trade areas.

During the summer semester of 2005, Dr. Norbert Kopytziok is directing the course "Ecology and Design" at the College of Architecture, Media and Design of the Berlin University of the Arts. The course focuses on the debate around ecological efficiency which has entered, over the last few years, the area of ecological product construction and Eco-design.

The Impact of Climate Change on the Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic was the theme of a an Expert Roundtable with Representatives of Circumpolar Indigenous Peoples moderated by R. Andreas Kraemer in the context of opening the new Canadian Embassy in Berlin. It was convened jointly by the Embassy of Canada in Berlin, in partnership with the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ecologic, and the Indigenous Peoples’ Secretariat of the Arctic Council on 18 May 2005.

The EC Water Framework Directive mandates that good ecological status should be reached in all water bodies in Europe by 2015. To this end, according to Article 11 of the Directive, programmes of measures shall be established for all river basins. The selection and combination of measures within these programmes should also take account of cost-effectiveness considerations. In an article for the Journal gwf Wasser / Abwasser, Benjamin Görlach, Nicole Kranz and Eduard Interwies present a possible methodology for this selection process, which was developed by Ecologic for the German Federal Environment Agency.

The implementation of the Water Framework Directive is one of the main items in the field of environmental protection. As a main novelty, the Directive foresees the integration of economic aspects into water-related decision making. However, current practice in Germany does not always match the definitions and approaches for economic evaluation developed at EU level, as Benjamin Görlach and Eduard Interwies note in this article "What is the Value of Water? Assessing Environmental and Resource Costs in the Water Framework Directive."

The German people responded generously to the tsunami catastrophe and proved their willingness to provide spontaneous help to the victims. Many water suppliers and municipalities have also offered their own proposals. The German Federal Environment Ministry wishes to build on this willingness and launched a project to investigate the opportunities available for a long term, professional commitment of the German civil society in the area of water provision and sanitation. The project team conducted interviews of experts and stakeholders from the water sector, the area of development policy and of academia, who then met in a workshop to discuss the results. The workshop documentation is available for download.

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the Water Framework Directive (WFD) are two of the most influential European policies in the area of environmental issues. Within this sixth Framework Programme (FP6) project, Ecologic and the Warsaw Agricultural University (WAU) are analysing the legal and organisational interlinkages between both policies in order to elaborate future synergies while implementing, planning, financing and controlling the various requirements of the WFD and the CAP.

Transatlantic Climate Dinners - Wine & Ideas from the New World will bring U.S. climate policy experts together with their German counterparts to discuss policies, strategies and recent developments in the climate debate in an informal yet private atmosphere. Dinner participants will include senior experts from government, research, civil society, and business. Transatlantic Climate Dinners are part of Ecologic’s Dinner Dialogue series and are supported by the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF).