KOPOS addresses the question of how greater regionalization of food supply can contribute to building environmentally friendly and more resilient supply structures. The KOPOS website was developed, implemented and designed by Ecologic Institute. It serves the public communication of the project's goals, events and results.

This policy brief provides an overview of the wide range of socio-economic benefits that nature-based solutions can generate. Co-authors IEEP and Ecologic Institute highlight the central role that such solutions can play in meeting the EU's 2030 commitments on climate action and biodiversity and identify recommendations to enhance their uptake. The paper is available for download.

How can think tanks help pave the path to a sustainable future in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and a rapidly changing policy landscape? Dr. Camilla Bausch and R. Andreas Kraemer address this question in the chapter "Think Tanks for Future" and make recommendations on how think tanks can adapt their work to reflect the pressing concerns of the future.

There is a growing impetus among policy makers and practitioners to support and empower capacities of communities under changing climatic conditions. Despite this there is little systematic understanding of why approaches work at local levels or not and what makes some communities resilient and others less so. Authors addressing this shortcoming by providing illustrative case studies and assessment tools from Europe’s North, East and South helping to bridge the gap between climate change policies, decision-making and the cultural traits of communities in Europe.

The H2020 EU-funded PONDERFUL project will investigate how ponds can be used as nature-based solutions (NBS) for climate change. It will evaluate the interaction and feedback between biodiversity, ecosystem services and climate in pondscapes.

Diffuse pollution is one of the key reasons European water bodies are failing to meet environmental objectives as specified in the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD). Outbreaks of toxic green algae affect rivers, lakes and coastal waters creating so-called "dead zones" where no aquatic life can thrive. Such outbreaks are by-products of dangerously increasing nutrient levels in water. Nutrient and soil losses have been recognised as challenges for decades across Europe and have been a key driver for freshwater biodiversity losses. With climate change, these challenges are likely to get worse: higher temperatures, lower river flows and more frequent and more violent flooding events. Other human-induced changes (such as dams and weirs) have modified the course of rivers and affected their natural flows.

The 2021 edition of the "Meat Atlas" focuses on the issues of "youth, climate and nutrition". Stephanie Wunder , coordinator food systems at Ecologic Institute, contributed an essay on the importance of meat alternatives. With one million copies distributed annually, the "Meat Atlas" has a large outreach to the public. The Meat Atlas is available in print and available for download.

In this project, three sufficiency projects are to be implemented, which the contractors had developed together with UBA employees in the previous project.

As part of its work within the ETC-ICM, Ecologic Institute has contributed as lead author to a new European Environment Agency (EEA) report examining the multiple pressures that agriculture put on Europe's water. The report shows that that a wider uptake of sustainable agricultural practices such as organic farming, agroecological approaches and nature-based solutions is necessary to protect the water environment. To achieve this, ambitious measures to promote sustainable agriculture must be adopted in the upcoming EU common agricultural policy 2021-2027.

The central objective of the Hydromorphology IV Workshop was to exchange experiences and information and to identify and reflect on challenges of the administrative and practical implementation processes of watercourse development measures.

CIRCASA 2020. Deliverable D3.1: "Strategic Research Agenda on soil organic carbon in agricultural soils." European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme grant agreement No 774378 – Coordination of International Research Cooperation on soil CArbon Sequestration in Agriculture. https://doi.org/10.15454/LSWRDG

Participants at the CIRCASA closing event explored the strategic research agenda and took first steps towards an international research consortium on soil organic carbon.

To achieve the turnaround towards carbon neutrality, countries around the world need to take much more ambitious action in this decade. One of the key fields of action is the transition of the energy sector –from fossil to renewable fuels, while drastically reducing energy consumption. This paper discusses options how such action can be enhanced through multilateral cooperation.

To provide the G20 leaders with scientific advice, Think20 – a group of think tanks and academia from G20 countries – will work over the upcoming months on policy papers and recommendations.

This article by Doris Knoblauch and Hannes Schritt (both Ecologic Institute) is part of the anthology "Einfach weglassen? Ein wissenschaftliches Lesebuch zur Reduktion von Plastikverpackungen im Lebensmittelhandel" (Simply Omit? A Scientific Reader on the Reduction of Plastic Packaging in the Food Trade). It deals with the emergence of plastic packaging in Germany and its known environmental impacts. The authors demonstrate that there is a close correlation between the amount of plastic packaging produced and the gross domestic product (GDP) - which, interestingly, is stronger than the correlation between GDP and packaging overall. In this context, avoidance strategies and improvement options for the circular economy are discussed.