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

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

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.

Public campaigns and other policy instruments can significantly influence consumer behaviour and contribute to a reduction of consumer food waste. However, there are only very few studies that have evaluated to what extent policy interventions actually reduced or prevented food waste. In this REFRESH Policy brief Ecologic Institute's Stephanie Wunder summarises REFRESH findings on consumer behaviour as well as related research results and derives policy recommendations to reduce consumer food waste.

The MinFuture project has developed a framework aimed at providing guidance on how to perform a more systematic physical accounting, as well as steps to help implement such a system. The MinFuture Business Brief is available for download.

Many of today’s large societal challenges, such as climate change mitigation, resource security, urbanisation and migration require a fundamental transformation of the way we use natural resources. However, our understanding of the stocks and flows of materials and energy (the physical economy) is highly fragmented and involves significant knowledge gaps. The MinFuture project developed a framework aimed at providing guidance on how to perform more systematic monitoring of the physical economy, as well as steps helping to implement such a system. The MinFuture Policy Brief is available for download.