This FIThydro Brief, written by Ecologic Institute's Hugh McDonald and Gerardo Anzaldúa, assesses the current and future demand for fish-friendly hydropower in Europe. It concludes that EU and national policy and economic developments offer a chance to innovate and address rising social and environmental concerns about hydropower's negative impacts.

2020: Green refuges for enabling cities' preparedness for future pandemics and global change. ENABLE Policy Brief 3.

On 17 September 2020, the European Commission proposed to raise the EU climate target for 2030, so as to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55% compared to 1990. In this policy brief, CLIMACT and Ecologic Institute unpack the Commission's impact assessment for the new target. The brief analyses key policy options and analytical results and compares them to recent studies, in particular CLIMACT's 2030 modelling results. Within the framework of the tightened target, the EU Commission proposes to extend the EU Emissions Trading Scheme to buildings and road transport – a major change to the EU's current climate policy architecture. The team discusses potential implications and provides context to the sectoral developments and policies. The briefing highlights key points where the Commission diverges from other studies, identifying climate mitigation potentials that merit more attention in future analysis.

A continuing decline in biodiversity, accelerating impacts of climate change, and the urgency of ensuring a sustainable and just recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic are generating unprecedented momentum behind the imperative of working with nature to address societal challenges. In this policy brief, McKenna Davis and Harriet Bulkeley (Durham University) highlight the importance of prioritizing nature-based solutions in the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework and supporting their uptake within and beyond the biodiversity community.

This short study gives a broad overview of the Commission’s proposal for the new Multiannual Financial Framework and the Next Generation EU program and their proposed climate investment shares.

2020: Local Action for Green and Blue Infrastructure – Lessons learned from transdisciplinary and cocreation processes in cities. ENABLE Policy Brief 2.

2020: Operationalising EU Policies for Urban Green and Blue Infrastructure. ENABLE Policy Brief 1.

Piria, Raffaele; Magdalena Magosch and Jakob Eckardt 2020: Offshore Wind Deployment in Germany. Facts and Policy Lessons. Berlin: adelphi.

The FIThydro Policy Brief presents summaries of selected key outputs from the H2020 FIThydro project, which are relevant for policy makers, managers and operators involved in the commissioning and operation of hydropower plants.

The RECIPES project aimed to develop new tools and guidelines to ensure the precautionary principle is applied while still encouraging innovation. The objective was to address and reduce societal controversy while helping policymakers and other stakeholders to assess risks and uncertainty and applying the precautionary principle taking into account innovation. This series of policy briefs condenses the joint research project findings and presents them consistently in the project design, developed by Ecologic Institute.

The multifunctional character of nature-based solutions enables them to provide responses to both social and environmental challenges. This policy brief provides gaps and opportunities to sustainable urban development through NBS at local and national as well as EU and international level. It also analyses local needs from the European and international levels.

This policy brief synthesises the latest results from the COACCH project on the economic costs of climate change in Europe and identifies areas of possible discussion to explore with stakeholders at the second COACCH workshop. The policy brief is available for download.

The discussion paper presents the rationale for a new treaty on tackling plastic waste and highlights its possible added value. The objective would be to reduce marine plastic litter through a comprehensive approach that also includes land-based sources, a life cycle approach to plastic and is open to future developments. The purpose would not be to prohibit plastics as such.

Climate planning for 2050 has become a core strand of debate in the European Union. Focus has shifted to a potential revision of the EU's long-term climate objectives within the context of a new 2050 strategy, which is to be submitted to the United Nations under the Paris Agreement by 2020. In parallel, all EU Member States must develop national strategies of their own, albeit with little central guidance and no overarching structure in place for collaboration.

A report by Ecologic Institute and Climact shows that the draft National Energy and Climate Plans presented by governments at the start of 2019 are in acute need of improvement. They suffer from inadequate targets and insufficient details on the policies and financing needed to move towards net-zero emission economies in Europe. Member States also need to do better in involving their national stakeholders in providing input to the plans, to benefit from their expertise and to get them on board for future policies. The report is available for download.