The year 2021 saw a positive dynamic on climate action internationally, despite the pandemic and its negative impacts on people’s well-being and on the global economy. Especially, the reverse in the US approach to the climate crisis has provided a new boost. Moreover, COP26 in Glasgow created political momentum, as it has shown a global spotlight on the need for international action and on various forms of cooperation to achieve the 1.5 °C target. In 2022, there are several windows of opportunity for further advances in multilateral cooperation on the climate crisis, including in the G7 and G20 discussions, led by Germany and Indonesia, respectively. And the new German government has reiterated its desire to create a new "climate club" in this context. This report contains several proposals for specific new initiatives that could be started.

The briefing provides a didactic overview on carbon farming. Specifically, it summarizes the current scientific understanding of the mitigation potentials, co-benefits and trade-offs of carbon farming, as well as the key agronomic practices and key knowledge gaps that need to be addressed to scale up carbon farming and to deliver robust climate mitigation and EU Green Deal objectives.

In Tanzania, the majority of the rural population still relies on fuelwood as their major source of cooking energy. The adaptation measures of small-scale farmers in response to increasing fuelwood scarcity play a key role in altering the course of nutrition insecurity, environmental degradation, and economic instability. This study delivers a classification of coping strategies that does not exist in the literature. Furthermore, it analyses the adaptation measures applied by small-scale farmers in the semi-arid region of Dodoma district in response to fuelwood scarcity. A comparison between two case study sites provides information on the choice of adaptation measures by households. Overall, 28 coping strategies from 24 studies are identified, then differentiated into preventive and acute measures that are arranged into eight clusters.

The European Consumer Food Waste Forum is a multi-disciplinary forum set up in October 2021 by the Joint Research Centre, which seeks to enable the EU's transition to a sustainable food system by finding solutions and developing tools that help to reduce food waste at the consumer level, including household and food services. Stephanie Wunder and 15 other practitioners and researchers will identify and develop multi-dimensional tools to curb consumer food waste, considering both the motivation of consumers as well as their ability and opportunity to change related behaviour. The tools will be multi-level addressing both the role of consumers and that of other key players engaged in food waste reduction. These will contribute to the work of the EU Platform on Food Losses and Food Waste and that of other players to help reduce consumer food waste.

Climate lawsuits have become a frequently chosen tool in the fight for more ambitious climate policies in recent years. In the extensive reporting on this topic, one aspect has so far been neglected: the differences between the jurisprudence in the Global South and the Global North. To address the related issues, Verfassungsblog, Völkerrechtsblog and the journal World Comparative Law (WCL) in cooperation with the Ecologic Institute are organizing an online symposium on the subject of "Comparative Climate Litigation in North-South Perspective".

In this review, Ecologic Institute's Doris Knoblauch and Linda Mederake analyse the subject focus of 45 articles (published 2019–2021), dealing with government action to regulate plastic pollution. Policies described in the articles and introduced between 2016 and 2021 are clustered in four categories: production – consumption – disposal – circular approaches. The article is open access and available for download.

In general words, the interview with Mario Delgado Galarraga, International Climate Protection Fellow at Ecologic Institute, touches upon issues concerning International Environmental and Climate Change Law. It briefly refers to the general background of the last COP, its possible outcomes, and the ongoing climate issues according to the IPCC. The interview was conducted and broadcast by the equadorian TV station TELESUCESOS and is available online.

Mandy Hinzmann, fellow researcher at the Ecologic Institute, gave a presentation in a scientific session of the World Resources Forum, which took place from 12 until 14 October 2021. She presented key policy options on how to foster the circular economy in the European textiles sector. She also participated in the discussion session after the presentations.

The purpose of this webinar series is to discuss the challenges that power grid operators and electricity producers face in Germany and the United States with a changing climate and policy and investment measures for adaptation and resilience. The goal is to share knowledge and best practices, foster transatlantic dialogue and connections, and to think critically about how best to safeguard critical energy infrastructures. Day 2 (Monday, 13 December 2021) will shift the perspective to policy and discuss the role of policymakers and policy solutions to facilitate adaptation in the electricity sector.

Citizens' councils are booming. Now, EU citizen panels have started. A first step has been taken, but it is still a long way to go for the EU Panels to be successful, write Nils Meyer-Ohlendorf from the Ecologic Institute and Felix Nasser from the German Bürgerrat Klima in the Tagesspiegel Background. They make three proposals how to turn the EU Citizens Panels into a success.

To continue the successful exchange on various aspects of Arctic marine conservation in November 2020, twenty international experts from research and policy came together again in a virtual meeting for the "Arctic Marine Conservation Dialogue" on 17 and 18 November 2021.

According to a recent EEA report co-authored by Ecologic Institute, water stress has become a serious problem across Europe and climate change is likely to raise the challenge. The report "Water resources across Europe – confronting water stress: an updated assessment" calls for a shift from crisis management to risk management to prevent irreversible negative consequences for nature and society. The report emphasizes the need for greater water use efficiency and improved ecosystem resilience, as water resources become insufficient to meet the joint demand of humans and nature.

The climate crisis is impacting cities and communities across the globe. As extreme weather events become increasingly frequent, cities must work together to find effective nature-based solutions (NBS) to adapt to their changing climates. As lead partner in the BEGIN project, the Dutch city of Dodrecht welcomed cities, practitioners, researchers and citizens to join the conversation on the future of livable cities. To this end, the NEXT LEVEL 2021 conference was held as a hybrid event on the 20th of October 2021. Ecologic Institute's McKenna Davis was invited as an expert to present on NBS governance and policy.

The globalisation of agriculture means that cities are no longer primarily supplied by their surrounding areas. Yet, regional structures can help to make food more sustainable and environmentally friendly. In this podcast, detektor.fm presenter Charlotte Thielmann asks Stephanie Wunder from Ecologic Institute whether regional food is the answer to the problems of the food industry.

Ursula von der Leyen (President of the European Commission) described the European Green Deal as "Europe's man-on-the-moon moment". With this plan, the European Union aims to achieve climate neutrality by 2050, protect and enhance nature, and sustainably transform the European economy and society. But what exactly is the European Green Deal? Which role does it play in our everyday life? And what challenges does it pose? In our podcast and webinar series "Green deal – Big Deal?" we take a critical look at these questions and discuss various aspects of the European Green Deal with experts from policy, business and science.