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Publications – Ecologic Institute US
Integrating Resource Efficiency, Greening of Industrial Production and Green Industries – Scoping of and Recommendations for Effective Indicators
The study by Ecologic Institute develops an organising framework to summarise scientific findings concerning a diversity of indicators and assesses their potential applicability to measuring sustainable industries and sustainable industrial development. Altogether, it is suggested to apply a set of indicators in order to balance existing methodological challenges and to combine explanatory power. Read more ...
Cambio Climático
The growing importance of international law for global climate cooperation is underscored in a new book chapter by Michael Mehling and Arturo Brandt, which recently appeared in the first manual on international environmental law for a Spanish-speaking audience. Read more ...
Addressing the Challenge of Global Climate Mitigation – An Assessment of Existing Venues and Institutions
Recent years have seen the climate negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change fail to achieve a major breakthrough on climate change mitigation, and no such breakthrough is expected in the near future. In a study commissioned by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Dr. Camilla Bausch and Michael Mehling evaluate various venues and institutions addressing the climate challenge, and assess their influence on the future of global mitigation efforts. The study is available for download. Read more ...
Ecologic Institute in five minutes
Ecologic Institute is a private not-for-profit think tank for applied environmental research, policy analysis and consultancy with offices in Berlin, Brussels, Vienna, Washington DC, and San Mateo CA.
Sound complicated? It is! What do we work on? For whom do we work and who are we? What makes Ecologic Institute a "Knowledge Garden?" This film provides answers to these questions. Read more ...
Empirical Analysis of Associations between Trade and the Environment
This study investigates the prevailing theories about the effect of trade openness on environmental quality and resource management, providing new insights and empirical support to refute some of these theories. It builds on data collected through the Yale-Columbia 2010 Environmental Performance Index (EPI), which covers 163 countries and an extensive database of trade-related measures from academic and international sources. Senior fellow Tanja Srebotnjak contributed statistical analyses to the study. It is available for download. Read more ...
"Aligning Asset Management with Cause" in the Philanthropy Letter of the Fondation de Luxembourg
How can philanthropists make informed and responsible choices when investing the endowment of their foundation? How can they avoid destroying with their investments what they seek to protect with their grants? R. Andreas Kraemer of Ecologic Institute makes concrete suggestions in his article in the summer 2011 Philanthropy Letter of the Fondation de Luxembourg. Read more ...
San Francisco Chronicle and AICGS Advisor: The nuclear endgame begins in Germany
"Germany may well be regarded as the nation where the endgame of nuclear power began." Economics, risk assessments and public pressure lead many countries to halt nuclear power and shift to green energy. After an Op-Ed in the San Francisco Chronicle, R. Andreas Kraemer of Ecologic Institute explains in the AICGS Advisor the German decision and its impact on nuclear proliferation. Read more ...
The German Experience with Full Cost Recovery in the Water Sector: Practice and Problems
Dominic Marcellino, Fellow Ecologic Institute Washington, and Max Grünig, Fellow Ecologic Institute Berlin, published an article on cost recovery in line with the EU Water Framework Directive and related experiences in Germany. The text appeared in the March/April special edition of L’Acqua, an Italian journal for water issues. The paper builds off previous work done for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Read more ...
A global Water Quality Index and hot-deck imputation of missing data
Together with co-authors Alexander de Sherbinin (Columbia University), Genevieve Carr (Northern Oil and Gas Branch, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada) and Carrie Rickwood (Natural Resources Canada) Tanja Srebotnjak, Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute, published a study in the journal Ecological Indicators on the design and testing of a global water quality index. Read more ...
Prospects for sustainable bioenergy production in selected former communist countries
A new publication in the journal “Ecological Indicators” by Tanja Srebotnjak, from Ecologic Institute, and Peter Hardi, from the Central European University in Hungary, examines the potentials for sustainable bioenergy production in Bulgaria, Romania and the former Soviet republics in Central Asia. The study draws on official statistics and modeling results and concludes that bioenergy potentials are highest in Bulgaria, Romania, and Kazakhstan but depend on several factors including crop choice, climatic conditions, availability of suitable land, and the institutional and legal infrastructure. Read more ...
Protected Areas and the Importance of Biodiversity and Ecosystems in Economic Growth and Equity in Latin America and the Caribbean: An Economic Valuation of Ecosystems
"Latin America and the Caribbean; A Biodiversity Superpower" is an initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Marlon Flores, Senior Policy Advisor at Ecologic Institute, contributed the chapter on "Protected Areas" to the initiative's report "Importance of Biodiversity and Ecosystems in Economic Growth and Equity in Latin America and the Caribbean: An Economic Valuation of Ecosystems". Read more ...
Lessons for Cancun: Why biodiversity negotiations at Nagoya succeeded where Copenhagen failed
In this article in the online edition of IP Global, Germany's leading foreign policy magazine, Sascha Müller-Kraenner, Senior Policy Advisor of Ecologic Institute, looks at the outcomes of the COP 10 of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD) in Nagoya, Japan, and the reasons behind them. His analysis points to opportunities on the road ahead for the international climate negotiations beyond the UNFCCC COP 16 in Cancun, Mexico, at the end of 2010. Read more ...
Potential use of radioactively contaminated materials in the construction of houses from open pit uranium mines in Gabon and Niger
Ecologic Institute, represented by Tanja Srebotnjak and Sebastian Veit, completed a study commissioned by the European Parliament (EP) on the use of radioactively contaminated materials in the construction of residential dwellings in Gabon and Niger. In particular, the study examines practices in the disposal of materials discarded in the mining of uranium in these two countries and is based, inter alia, on a fact-finding mission to Gabon by Sebastian Veit. Read more ...
A novel framework for validating and applying standardized small area measurement strategies
Tanja Srebotnjak, Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute, with co-authors Professor Christopher Murray and Professor Ali Mokdad from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle, USA, published a methods paper in Population Health Metrics on small area estimation. Read more ...
Ecologic Institute 2010 Milestone: 15 Years
This year, the Ecologic Institute turns 15. Since its founding, Ecologic Institute has built a reputation for excellence in transdisciplinary and policy-relevant research. As an environmental think tank, Ecologic Institute uses its extensive project experience and network of partners on both sides of the Atlantic to address a broad range of environmental challenges. Read more ...
Technology Transfer in the International Climate Negotiations – The State of Play and Suggestions for the Way Forward
This article by Christiane Gerstetter, Dominic Marcellino, and Elena von Sperber explores the state of the climate technology transfer negotiations following the COP 15 meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009. The article appears in the Spring 2010 edition of the journal Carbon and Climate Law Review. Read more ...
Transforming Economies through Green Investment: Needs, Progress and Policies
In his 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama declared the need for “serious investments in clean energy” because “the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy”. In a new paper funded by the German Marshall Fund of the United States under the Transatlantic Climate Bridge initiative, authors from the Ecologic Institute in Washington DC and Berlin identify investment needs and policy incentives required to achieve this transition to a clean energy economy. Read more ...
Prospects of Linking EU and US Emission Trading Schemes: Comparing the Western Climate Initiative, the Waxman-Markey and the Lieberman-Warner Proposals
This working paper affirms that emissions trading systems currently under development in the US raise certain challenges for an operational market link, but are not generally incompatible. Specifically, certain design elements of trading systems may give rise to concern, such as cost containment provisions and borrowing and offset provisions. Read more ...
Linking Emissions Trading Schemes
A traditionally jurisprudential perspective on linking emissions trading systems is provided in this book chapter by Michael Mehling. He provides a conceptual framework for the distinction of legal and political criteria for the feasibility of carbon market linkages. Legal considerations, he argues, arise during the process of establishing the link, which necessitates recourse to recognized sources of law and legal procedures; and, second, in the event of a conflict between the link as such with substantive legal norms and principles, whether these originate in international, regional or domestic law. Read more ...
Linking of Emissions Trading Systems – Publication Series
Linking emissions trading schemes has attracted much interest as a means of reducing compliance costs, expanding market size and liquidity, and reducing volatility in the carbon market. It also offers a channel for climate cooperation across jurisdictions to complement the international negotiating process on a future climate regime. But linking also faces a number of barriers and poses potential risks if inadequately designed. In a series of peer-reviewed publications on this issue, Michael Mehling discusses institutional and legal implications, formulates design recommendations, and assesses prospects of a market link over the short term and medium term. Read more ...