If and how Germany can afford the coal phase-out was the subject of the presentation by Prof. Dr. Claudia Kemfert at an event, which took place on the heels of the first meeting of the new German task force for phasing out coal power. Co-hosted by the DIW Berlin and the OECD Berlin, Dr. Camilla Bausch of Ecologic Institute discussed with Prof. Kemfert and the audience the broad range of relevant questions.

Germany seems to be missing its climate protection targets for 2020 – can a climate protection law help avoid such failures in the future? Will the Climate Protection Plan 2050 and its sectoral goals be bindingly anchored in the law? Within the context of the Energy Future Exchange (EFEX) project, a round of international experts discussed these questions at the Climate Talk at Ecologic Institute in Berlin. Bringing in a transatlantic perspective, the discussion also touched on the climate protection frameworks currently in place in California and Mexico.

The national and international political agenda shows that resource conservation is a central task for environmental policy: In Germany, Europe and globally, there are political programmes and strategies aimed at fostering sustainable resource use. In five theses, this brochure from the SimRess project shows that an integrative and systemically designed resource policy contributes to achieving the goals of resource protection and climate protection. The study was carried out by Ecologic Institute with Martin Hirschnitz-Garbers and Susanne Langsdorf as co-authors. The brochure is available for download.

In April 2018, the second cycle of the Forum "Fish Protection and Downstream Migration" ended, which was devoted, among other things, to improving the implementation of measures. In this article, the authors, among them Dr. Ulf Stein of Ecologic Institute, summarize the intensive discourse between all stakeholders over the past six years and present the resulting twelve recommendations. The recommendations describe how to proceed with this topic in the future and how to avoid potential conflicts in practice. The article is published in WasserWirtschaft, Issue 06/2018, Springer Vieweg.

The SimRess project tested the potential effects of future developments and strategies relevant to resource policy on important environmental and economic indicators. The study summarises the main project findings of the project "Models, Potentials and Long-Term Scenarios for Resource Efficiency". It is available for download.

On 1 and 2 June 2018, Ecologic Institute's Lina Röschel, Hugh McDonald, and Philipp Voß participated in the European Parliament's European Youth Event as invited expert panelists. The event was attended by more than 8000 Europeans aged between 16 and 30, who gathered to learn, discuss, and generate ideas for change in Europe. Philipp Voß, Hugh McDonald and Lina Roeschel drew on their research at Ecologic Institute and spoke on three different panels under the topic of "Protecting our Planet", discussing oceans, fresh water, and climate change.

Ecologic Institute designed a promotional flyer as part of the visual identity for the project "Plastic in the Environment – Sources • Sinks • Solutions." The flyer summarizes the general objectives and aims of the project, contains a list of partners and contact information and is styled according to the project style-guide.

Instances of extreme temperatures and hurricanes are increasing. Polar ice masses are withdrawing further, climate change is threatening mankind. At the 19th Poetry Festival Berlin, poets talked with Daniela Seel (editor and poet) and Arne Riedel (Ecologic Institute) in a "Poetry Talk: World Climate Summit of Poetry". The discussion touched upon the potential of poetry to connect people emotionally to climate change and how it can generate attention for this topic.

How can the German government's planned "gradual reduction and end of coal-fired electricity generation" succeed – and what are the concrete implications of it for the state of Brandenburg? This was the focus of discussion at a Berlin Energy Days event hosted by the German Advisory Council on the Environment (SRU). Panelists included the SRU's Professor Kemfert and Undersecretary Fischer of Brandenburg's Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. Dr. Camilla Bausch of Ecologic Institute contributed conceptually.

Professor Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker introduced the Club's new report "Come On!" at a Dinner Dialogue hosted by Ecologic Institute. The event featured guest speakers Professor Klaus Töpfer and Dr. Simone Peter, who commented on the book. Ecologic Institute’s director Dr. Camilla Bausch initiated and moderated the event.

Initially developed for the Science Year 2016/*17 – Seas and Oceans of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the funding for the youth campaign "Plastic Pirates" has been extended as part of the BMBF's research focus "Plastic in the Environment". The campaign takes place from 1 May until 30 June 2018 and allows young people between 10 and 16 years old to become scientists and contribute to a large citizen science project. A second period for sampling is envisaged for 15 September until 15 November 2018. We invite all young people to join! For "Plastic Pirates", the PlastikNet team at Ecologic Institute is collaborating with the Kieler Forschungswerkstatt.

On 21 April 2018, the one-day workshop "Narrative Sustainable Management" took place in Berlin. The team of the "Scientific Coordination of Research Projects on a Sustainable Economy" (NaWiKo) had invited interested projects of the funding measure to the workshop. The goal was to come together to consider and test how narratives on a sustainable economy can be identified and used for the projects – and perhaps even find a common "narrative".

The 7th workshop of the forum "Fish Protection and Downstream Migration" was dedicated to the topic of improving the implementation of measures at the end of the second cycle of the forum. The workshop took place in Dresden in April 2018. Important to this workshop was the task of creating a summary of the intense discourse that had taken place between all of the stakeholders over the past six years. These discourses were then synthesized into twelve guidelines. The recommendations and results of the event are available for download.

The workshop "Regional Food Systems and Sustainable Land Use in the Rural Urban Nexus" on 11 April 2018 discussed the potential that food systems can play to improve rural urban linkages. The workshop aimed to discuss the available insights at international level about success factors of regional food policies and if these are also relevant in the German context. To do so, the workshop brought together local policy makers, federal policy makers as well as participants from research and civil society. Stephanie Wunder, Senior Fellow at the Ecologic Institute and project leader of the Rural Urban Nexus project, presented success factors known from international examples and studies that promote rural urban linkages through regional food systems.

On 27 March 2018, around 20 social scientists, all involved in a project of the research program "Plastic in the Environment", funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research, met to network and discuss future possibilities to increase the visibility of the social and political dimensions of plastics in the environment. The chair for science and technology policy at the Munich Center for Technology in Society organized the meeting together with Ecologic Institute.