Developing countries are the main providers of genetic resources and traditional knowledge. Conversely, most intellectual property rights (IPRs) on seeds and medicines are concentrated in developed countries. The study concludes that this has some disadvantages for developing countries. Thus, patents on seed or pharmaceutical products sometimes make the access to such products for the poor more difficult and expensive; there are hardly any positive effects of IPRs on fighting poverty by contrast. Read more ...

On 24 and 25 October  2011, Stephan Sina, Senior Fellow at Ecologic Legal, and Gesa Homann, Researcher at Ecologic Institute, held a seminar on current issues in German and European environmental law at the Berlin Academy of Public Administration (Verwaltungsakademie Berlin). Read more ...

In the summer term of 2011, Christiane Gerstetter and Doris Knoblauch, Fellows at the Ecologic Institute, taught a seminar on policy consulting at the University of Applied Sciences in Bremen. Some 35  students, enrolled in  a bachelor’s programme, participated. The seminar consisted of a block of three units for a total duration of 32 hours  for a full course credit. Read more ...

On the first day of the conference "Global Energy Challenges – Transatlantic Business Opportunities", experts from both Germany and the USA gave a practical overview of the US energy market and discussed the integration of renewable energies in the energy system and the financing of renewable energy projects. Michael Mehling moderated the plenum "System Integration of Renewable Energies". Read more ...

Waste policy is developing dynamically in Europe and Germany. The presentation of Alexander Neubauer, Coordinator European Research and Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute, dealt with both the basic European  requirements for waste policy and current German  developments. Read more ...

Part of the project "Transatlantic Opportunities for Meeting Global Challenges in Energy Efficiency and Low Carbon Technology", Dominic Marcellino (Ecologic Institute Fellow) presented the results of a research paper, which was written with Christiane Gerstetter, at a conference in Berkeley, California. The conference, held at University of California, Berkeley, on 11 and 12 February 2011, where researchers delivered initial results. Read more ...

As part of the annual conference of the physics student council of Cusanuswerk “Energy isn’t only in chocolate – intelligent energy use: ecological and efficient” in Dresden, Stephan Sina, Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute and former Cusanuswerk scholarship recipient, held a lecture on “Renewable Energy as a Central Building Block of Climate Protection Policy” on 15 October 2010. Read more ...

Ecologic Institute was invited to participate in a conference on "Climate Change Policy: Lessons from the European Experience" hosted on 25 and 26 March 2010 by the Center for European Studies at Rutgers University as part of "Lessons from Europe", a two-year program of events exploring what US policy-makers and citizens can learn from the experiences of European democracies in addressing 21st century policy challenges. Read more ...

As part of this year’s theme “Climate Change and Security Policy,” the Tönissteiner Kreis held this panel discussion in cooperation with the International Club of the Federal Foreign Office of Germany.  Stephan Sina from Ecologic Institute along with Steffen Bauer (German Development Institute) and Bernd Mesovic (Pro Asyl) sat on the panel. The discussion was moderated by Dagmar Dehmer (Tagesspiegel). Read more ...