Ecologic Institute, in cooperation with the German Federal Environmental Agency (UBA), organized and hosted an intensive three-day training course for PhD students from 27 to 29 April 2015 in Dessau and Berlin (Germany), entitled "Policy and Regulation of Pollutants in the Environment". The training was part of the CAPACITIE project, one of the prestigious Marie Curie Initial Training Networks (ITNs) funded by the European Commission, which focuses on pollution in urban environments. The presenters held talks focusing on local (city level), national, and EU-level efforts addressing environmental pollution and covered regulatory approaches, methodological tools and practical initiatives. The presentations are available for download.

CAPACITIE includes 12 PhD projects, addressing a variety of issues linked to pollution monitoring in cities, such as the development of new technologies for pollution monitoring. Today, more than 50% of the world’s population lives in cities, and nearly 2 billion extra urban residents expected in the next 20 years. This underlines the importance of better understanding the factors and processes affecting urban pollution, and its potential negative impacts on human health and environment. The broad nature of the challenge is witnessed by the project setup: associate and partner organisations of CAPACITIE span the industrial, regulatory, consultancy, research and governmental sectors.

For the training course, the German Federal Environment Agency (UBA) and Ecologic Institute teamed up to organize and hold presentations on different aspects of chemical regulation and monitoring, the practice of environmental monitoring and planning in urban areas, aspects of policy processes and socio-economic methodologies, and so on. In addition to presenters from Ecologic Institute and UBA, representatives of Berlin authorities, institutions, universities, and NGOs kindly held presentations on their initiatives related to the topic.

Programme of the training course:

1. Monitoring of surface waters under the EU – Water Framework Directive (Dr. Jens Arle, UBA)
2. Regulating plastics in the marine environment (Stefanie Werner, UBA)
3. Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (PRTR) – from data submission to publication (Dr. Joachim Heidemeier, UBA)
4. International activities for pharmaceutical safety (Silke Hickmann, UBA)
5. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl Substances – Environmental Concerns and Regulatory Measures (Dr. Sue-Martina Starke, UBA)
6. Environmental risk assessment of chemical mixtures – from research to regulatory implementation (Dr. Tobias Frische, UBA)
7. Air quality in urban environments (Dr. Marcel Langner, UBA)
8. Evolution of European and German water management (R. Andreas Kraemer, Ecologic Institute)
9. Trace organic compounds in the urban water cycle - the ASKURIS project in Berlin (Prof. Martin Jekel, Technical University Berlin)
10. Environmental Atlas Berlin – Air pollution (Dr. Andreas Kerschbaumer, Berlin Senate Department Urban Development and the Environment)
11. Citizen Science in Germany (Dr. David Ziegler, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin)
12. Urban ecology data Berlin (Dr. Michael Gödde, Berlin Senate Department Urban Development and the Environment)
13. Citizen Science in Berlin (Dr. Ulrike Sturm, Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin)
14. Environmental Justice (Herbert Lohner, BUND)
15. Economic instruments in water policy (Dr. Manuel Lago, Ecologic Institute)
16. The EU from Theory to Practice (Stefanie Schmidt, Ecologic Institute)
17. Stakeholder involvement at the EU level and in selected Member States (Doris Knoblauch, Ecologic Institute)
18. NGO experience with lobbying European processes (Susan Haffmans, PAN- Germany)
19. Combatting environmental crime in the EU - the long way from an idea through regulation to law enforcement (Christiane Gerstetter, Ecologic Institute)
20. Pharmaceutical pollution and the Water Framework Directive (Rodrigo Vidaurre, Ecologic Institute)
21. Marine pollution regulation in the EU (Ina Krüger, Ecologic Institute)
22. Water reuse and water quality-related issues (Dr. Ulf Stein, Ecologic Institute)