The impact of financial services on the environment has been attracting increasing attention for quite some time now. The area of the so called Green Investment, meaning the combination of pecuniary reward with ecological concerns, plays an especially prominent role. Following the steady growth of this market share, the issue of market transparency has become one of the major concerns for the near future.

The number of EU directives and regulations that shape the environmental policy of the Member States has increased substantially over the last decades. At the same time it has become evident that in many areas implementation of the European guidelines has occurred only in an insufficient manner and that the effectiveness is limited.

The project analyzed the potential of an integrated national tourism policy against the background of globalisation and identified opportunities for strengthening the respective German position in an international context.

Water prices have become the topic of an often heated political debate in many European countries. Rising prices increasingly call into question the costly measures to protect consumers, health and the environment. Against this background international comparisons of water prices have been attracting more and more media and political attention.

Businesses, cities, states, universities and churches are striving to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to protect the Earth's climate. A new transatlantic survey by Michael Northrop reveals a multitude of initiatives, both in the U.S. and in Europe. Michael Northrop directs the Sustainable Development grantmaking program at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) in New York City and is the author of this paper.

R. Andreas Kraemer, the Director of Ecologic Institute, presented a first assessment of recent developments concerning the potential liberalisation of water services in Europe.

Ecologic's forest expert Richard Tarasofsky published an article in the Policy Trend Report 2001/2002 by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES).

The main objective of the HarmoniCOP (project duration 2002 – 2005) project, which was funded under the 5th European framework for Research, was to increase the understanding of participatory river basin management in Europe. It caters to the paradigm that river basin management can only be effective and sustainable if the actors at each level and in each phase and sector become engaged in a social learning process.

Options for a co-operation between UNEP/Mediterranean Action Plan and the EU initiative EUROMED are now presented in an Ecologic Brief. The Brief points out ways for an improved environmental integration and the sustainable development of the Mediterranean region.

The results of the workshop entitled "The Architecture of the Global System of Governance of Trade and Sustainable Development" that took place on 9 and 10 December 2002 in Berlin have been published in an Ecologic Brief. Based on the background paper of the workshop and the debates which took place during the discussions, this brochure seeks to give an overview of the complex issue of the global governance of trade and sustainable development and to convey to a wider audience the main questions facing the research community.

On 21 May, the Kyiv report "Europe's environment: The third assessment" was released in the run-up to the meeting of Environment ministers from the wider European continent in Kyiv, Ukraine, which was organised by the UN's Economic Commission for Europe (UN-ECE). Chapter 13 dealing with progress in managing the environment was drawn up with the joint help of Ecologic and IEEP London.

Simon Marr and Sebastian Oberthür have together with Christoph Bail co-authored a chapter which has been published in one of the leading German handbooks on European and German environmental law. The chapter, entitled "Climate protection and law", appears in the Handbuch zum europäischen und deutschen Umweltrecht, which is edited by Hans-Werner Rengeling.