Democracy
Bypassing Germany’s Reformstau: The Remarkable Rise of Renewable Energy
The implementation of Germany’s highly effective Feed-in-Tariff model (FITM) for the promotion of renewable energy (RE) is a remarkable achievement given the rigid structure of the German political system. The many veto points in the political system cause certain policy inertia -Reformstau- in Germany, making comprehensive policy changes a rare occurrence. In this article, Prof. Dr. Christoph Stefes, Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute, addresses how Germany’s FITM was nonetheless passed in the 1990s, leading to a boom for renewable energy in Germany. Read more ...
DeutschNachhaltigkeit braucht Strategie
The German national Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS) has the potential to set the pace for Germany’s development towards a more sustainable society. Unfortunately, the strategy fails to define overarching strategic objectives. Isolated measures, indicators and time plans need to be bundled in an integrated strategy for the future. The authors of the policy brief “Sustainability needs Strategy” recommend that the German Government includes four new areas of action in its current SDS: sustainable wealth; sustainable labour policy; sustainable engagement policy and culture of sustainability. These areas are decisive to successfully embed sustainability in Germany’s government, economy and society and will determine whether Germany remains a leader in sustainability. Anneke von Raggamby, Senior Fellow and Head of European Integration at Ecologic Institute is Associate 2009/2010 at the stiftung neue verantwortung (snv) and was one of the authors of this policy brief. The policy brief “Sustainability needs Strategy” can be downloaded. Read more ...
Policy consulting by intermediary organizations
Spring term 2010, Bremen - Christiane Gerstetter, Doris Knoblauch
Christiane Gerstetter and Doris Knoblauch, Fellows of Ecologic Legal, are teaching a seminar at the University for Applied Sciences Bremen in the summer term 2010. The seminar is entitled "Policy consulting by intermediary organisations" and is part of the International Degree Course in Policy Management; its aim is to provide students with first-hand insights into the work of an environmental think tank. Read more ...
International regimes and environmental policy integration: introducing the special issue
This article, which is co-authored by Senior Fellow Ingmar von Homeyer of the Ecologic Institute, introduces a special issue of the journal International Environmental Agreements on environmental policy integration (EPI) at the international level. Referring to the integration of environmental concerns into other, non-environmental policies, the concept of EPI has been applied at national and EU-level but has rarely been analysed in relation to the global arena. Read more ...
The role of think tanks in the EU environmental policy process
30 April 2010, Bruges - Ingmar von Homeyer
Over the years the number of think tanks in Brussels has increased significantly. Against this general backdrop, the lecture by Ecologic Senior Fellow Ingmar von Homeyer at the College of Europe in Bruges focussed on environmental think tanks dealing with EU environmental policy. He argued that the role and characteristics of the environmental think tanks differ significantly from those of the Brussels “generalist” think tanks, which focus on a much broader spectrum of EU policies than their environmental counterparts. Read more ...
Werdegang einer Milliardenspende - Wie die „U.N. Foundation“ zur Verwirklichung internationaler Aufgaben beiträgt
An unprecedented donation by media mogul Ted Turner in 1997 resulted in the creation of a non-profit charity devoted to helping the United Nations achieve its objectives. The evolution, key activities and figures of the U.N. Foundation are briefly described in this article. Read more ...
Environmental Think Tanks as Actors and Research Objects – Comparing the U.S. and EU Perspectives
On 12 October 2009, a transatlantic Ecologic Dinner Dialogue was held in Berlin in honour of James G. McGann, Director of the “Think Tanks and Foreign Policy Program” of the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) at the University of Pennsylvania. In his talk, James G. McGann presented the findings of his latest research on environmental think tanks and laid out the differences between EU and US environmental think tanks. In his view, there are important differences in the political cultures of the two regions. Read more ...
Promoting democratic management of natural resources in Ukraine
On 6-12 September 2009 Nataliya Stupak, a researcher at Ecologic Institute, organized and coordinated the workshop “Developing multi-level and decentralized implementation capacity for natural resource management and environmental policies: A contribution to polycentric governance in an emerging democracy”, which took place in Kiev, Ukraine. Read more ...
Guide to Public Participation according to article 14 of the EC Water Framework Directive – a RhineNet project report
The participation requirements (§14) of the EC Water Framework Directive (WFD) launched, for the first time, a broader discussion about participatory approaches in water management. Still, the demand for policies, which are oriented toward the public and public participation, is nothing new. Many forms of participation have been known and tested since the 70’s and 80’s. Most of them emerged from city and regional planning projects and discussions. Read more ...
Participatory governance in the European Union
In his contribution Ingmar von Homeyer examines the level of participatory governance in three issue areas: biotechnology regulation/the revision of the Deliberate Release Directive, European political values/the ‘sanctions’ against Austria/revision of Article 7 TEU, and employment policy/the European Employment Strategy. Read more ...
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