A team of experts from the European Topic Centre on Inland, Coastal and Marine Waters (ETC-ICM) including Ecologic Institute's Dr. Ulf Stein published a study on the "Combined effects of human pressures on Europe's marine ecosystem". The paper was issued by the Journal for environment and society "Ambio". The central objective is to assess the extent to which human activities exert pressures on marine environments and where these pressures lead to degradation of the ecosystem.

This user manual supports the members of the German Roundtable on Marine Litter in using the internet platform https://muell-im-meer.de. In the internal area of the platform, members have various possibilities to present their organization and its activities for reducing marine litter as well as to participate in working groups. Distribution list maintenance and communication within the Roundtable on Marine Litter is also handled and documented via the platform.

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are increasingly employed as a tool to protect Europe's swiftly declining marine biodiversity. However, despite increasing coverage, MPA effectiveness and equity is considered highly variable. Concurrently, Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM) – that is, management that aims to protect, restore, or enhance the resilience and sustainability of an ecosystem to ensure sustainable flows of ecosystem services and conserve its biodiversity – is growing in prominence.

Ecosystem-based management (EBM) is the most promising approach for balancing sustainable development and biodiversity protection in aquatic ecosystems. This book introduces the essential concepts and principles required to implement Ecosystem-Based Management, detailing tools and techniques, and describing the application of these concepts and tools. This book is a joint effort with researchers from Ecologic Institute, the University College of Cork in the Republic of Ireland and the US Environment Protection Agency and can be accessed free of charge.

This research report contains the results of the UBA-project "Environmental guidelines of a German Arctic policy". It highlights several starting points for the German environmental department to foster environmental protection in the Arctic, even from a non-Arctic state’s point of view. The report also describes the activities undertaken within the project to raise awareness with the general public on existing links between Germany and the Arctic. Those activities include inter alia an explanatory video and a public event.

This report presents for the first time an overview of anthropogenic pressures and their combined effects on Europe's seas. The assessment covers the period of 2011 to 2016 and presents how human activities and pressures on seas have changed over a longer time horizon. The highest potential combined effects are found along coastal areas of the North Sea, Southern Baltic Sea, Adriatic and Western Mediterranean. However, there are also positive developments and the report points to improvements in nutrient levels, hazardous substances and northern fish and tuna stocks.

The main objective of the platform is to provide organisational support for the German Roundtable on Marine Litter and its working groups. In addition, the public part of the platform serves public relations work and the bundling of information on marine litter. The Ecologic Institute developed this central German portal on marine litter technically, structurally and graphically to support the fulfilment of the tasks of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive with regard to marine litter and other international obligations (e.g. Action Plan on Marine Litter, OSPAR, HELCOM).

There are numerous regulatory approaches at the international, regional and national level regarding the handling of plastic products and plastic waste. What they all have in common is their limited effectiveness. Linda Mederake, Stephan Gürtler and Doris Knoblauch argue that this is partly due to the fact that at the international level a large number of binding agreements and voluntary initiatives have developed independently of one another and are therefore not coordinated in terms of content. The Plastics Atlas 2019 is available online.

Kemper, Melanie, Christian Bruhn 2019: Kurzkonzept für den Relaunch der Internetplattform Meeresmüll – www.muell-im-meer.de. Berlin, unpublished.

As part of the 'Sustainability 2030 Science Platform', Ecologic Institute has published a study on oceans as a global commons. An overview of the different governance mechanisms in regard to the Global Commons "Oceans" area are discussed. The study is available for download and will be presented at the beginning of December at the Annual Conference 2019 of the Science Platform.

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.

The Baltic Sea Action Plan and the EU Water Framework Directive both require substantial additional reductions of nutrient loads (N and P) to the marine environment. Focusing on nitrogen, we present a widely applicable concept for spatially differentiated regulation, exploiting the large spatial variations in the natural removal of nitrate in groundwater and surface water. By targeting mitigation measures towards areas where nature’s own capacity for removal is low, spatially differentiated regulation can be more cost-effective than the traditional uniform regulation. We present a methodology for upscaling local modelling results on targeted measures at field scale to Baltic Sea drainage basin scale. The paper assesses the potential gain and discusses key challenges related to implementation of spatially differentiated regulation, including the need for more scientific knowledge, handling of uncertainties, practical constraints related to agricultural practice and introduction of co-governance regimes.

The conference proceedings for the status conference of the research focus "Plastics in the Environment – Sources • Sinks • Solutions", presenting the joint research projects and cross-cutting topics, are available for download.