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).

The Technical University Berlin hosted the conference "Water – Economic Good, Weapon, Human Right" on 9 February 2005. Ecologic Associate Britta Pielen spoke on the recent trends towards liberalisation in European water policy and the implications for the German water sector. Over the last years, the water and sanitation sector has increasingly been put under reform pressure. In particular at the European level, a political trend towards liberalising the provision of water services can be observed. These attempts are generally justified by the supposedly positive experiences with the liberalisation of other network industries, as well as with stricter environmental and quality requirements.

Jacqueline McGlade, Executive Director of the European Environment Agency, presented and discussed her ideas on „Green Ways to Growth“ at an Ecologic/IEEP Dinner Dialogue arranged in her honour on 28 February 2005. Considering the tensions related to emphasising synergies between the economy and the environment on the one hand and the plea for a strong independent environmental policy in its own right on the other, participant statements highlighted aspects of and debated solutions for a green path for growth.

In this article, Sebastian Oberthür and Thomas Gehring argue that a World Environment Organisation (WEO) does not promise to enhance international environmental governance. The authors claim that the establishment of an international organisation alone in a policy field currently populated by regimes cannot be expected to significantly improve environmental governance because there is no qualitative difference between these two forms of governance institutions. This article does not address in detail or extent upon recent proposals for giving more importance to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) or for upgrading it to a special UN organisation.

The federal bill addressing non-discriminatory network access in the energy sector will significantly reform the existing legal framework for grid operators in Germany. A crucial aspect of the reform is the strengthening of rules for vertically integrated energy companies active in production and distribution, as well as grid operation. In her publication, Dr. Camilla Bausch critically analyses and evaluates unbundling rules for the electricity sector against the background of lawmakers' objectives – including promoting competition, reducing conflict of interest cases and quelling market distorting activities.

The Ecologic Dinner Dialogue on 17 February 2005 focused on the role of renewable energies in the USA. It was held to honour Jan McFarland and James H. Caldwell. This "zero-emission-pair" has shown great commitment over the last decades for a change in energy supply leading to an increased use of renewable energies in the USA.

The results of the study "International Comparison of Water Management" have been published in five volumes by the Austrian Federal Chamber of Labour and the Austrian Association of Cities. The synthesis and conclusion of the study, which provides a systematic comparison against European and economic background, is now also available in English.