The increasing frequency of floods and droughts highlights the urgent need for climate-resilient landscapes. This is where the European research project SpongeWorks comes in, demonstrating sustainable "sponge" measures in river basins across Greece, France, and the Netherlands/Germany. By restoring rivers, wetlands, and implementing innovative agricultural practices, landscapes are becoming better equipped to retain and release water in a controlled way. With 28 partners involved, the project aims to inspire other regions by sharing success stories and tools to promote "sponge landscapes" across Europe.

The aim of the project is to support the promotion of ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) in tropical and subtropical coastal regions. This is to be achieved by strengthening the technical information base, promoting the international exchange of experience and developing and communicating policy- and implementation-oriented recommendations for action to decision-makers.

Brandenburg's cabinet adopted a peatland protection program in March 2023, building on the National Peatland Protection Strategy and the 2021 "Climate Protection through Peatland Protection" initiative. The project aims to develop recommendations for communication on peatland protection in Brandenburg, examining the current communication landscape. The Ecologic Institute is commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture, Environment, and Climate Protection of the State of Brandenburg.

This project for The Nature And Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU) aims to convey in an effective and accessible way that our actions today have an impact on the future, especially on nature and the livelihoods of future generations. Through carefully designed visualizations that are based on scientific research, we want to show how the climate crisis is affecting nature and the German landscape, and how climate protection and adaptation can prevent damage, mitigate the effects of the biodiversity crisis and ultimately improve our lives.

The German agriculture sector faces significant climate-related challenges due to extreme weather events along with shifts in temperature patterns, impacting crop yields and biodiversity and exacerbating water scarcity and water quality deterioration. The Panda Fördergesellschaft (on behalf of WWF) is commissioning Ecologic Institute to create a handbook, "Water Stewardship in German Agriculture," aiming to offer practical solutions to enhance water retention, quality, and biodiversity. The handbook will include an overview of Germany's water situation, legal framework, specific measures with contextualised examples, and ways to promote collective action.

The Pacific Island Countries face severe climate-related challenges affecting water access and sanitation, endangering public health and hindering development. The PacFresH2O project aims to enhance rural communities' water resilience in Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands by improving water infrastructure, implementing nature-based solutions and water resource management, integrating climate resilient WASH into national plans, and collaborating with local stakeholders to maximize socio-economic benefits and mitigate climate change impacts.

This project is focused on assessing and improving the impact of Climate-ADAPT through an evaluation that looks both backward and forward. The primary objective of the project is to comprehensively evaluate Climate-ADAPT, including its subsites such as the European Climate and Health Observatory and the EU Mission on Adaptation Portal.

This study aims to support the Advisory Board in providing policy-relevant recommendations on how to increase adaptation efforts and enhance the resilience of the EU against climate change impacts. Ecologic Institute is coordinating the work on global and EU level policy processes on adaptation.

The project is targeted at postgraduate students, professionals and managers from developing countries and provides them with a wide range of skills in environmental management. It combines lecture series and interactive workshops to deepen the understanding of sustainable approaches such as ecosystem-based management (EBM), nature-based solutions (NbS) and restoration measures and to promote practical skills. The events on Vilm Island (May 30 to October 23, 2024) as well as previous formats, such as the 88th UNEP/UNESCO/BMUV course focusing on water resource management (October 2023 in Dresden), played a central role in knowledge transfer. The aim is to equip future decision-makers with the necessary tools to effectively tackle complex environmental and societal challenges.

The importance of indicator frameworks in monitoring and evaluation of local adaptation action is increasingly recognized, but there is still limited knowledge shared on them. The primary goal of this project is to gather essential information on the monitoring and evaluation of adaptation strategies at the local level, providing insights into how cities measure progress on the ground.

The Assessing Climate Change Risk in EUrope (ACCREU) project aims to support a just transition to climate resilience in the EU by co-creating and delivering actionable ideas and new knowledge. This project brings together diverse stakeholders to address climate change adaptation and mitigation in the face of new social and environmental challenges.

CREDIBLE functions as a knowledge hub for driving carbon farming forwards. It is organised as a network of networks, involving existing research projects, initiatives, commercial sectors and public administrations.

Ecologic Institute supports the European Topic Center in the field of water policy and management. In particular, it provides coordination and technical support for the preparation of the State of European Water and the Integrated Water Assessment.

Healthy wetlands are acknowledged for being among the most effective sinks for carbon and for providing other valuable ecosystem services. In contrast, human-impacted wetlands represent a major source of greenhouse gases (GHG). Important research questions on the GHG abatement potential of wetland restoration and on management and restoration actions to maintain and promote the mitigation and adaptation capacity of European wetlands are still to be answered due to major data and knowledge gaps. The RESTORE4Cs project (a 3-year Research and Innovation Action funded by the EU) aims to fill this gap by assessing the role of restoration action in wetlands climate change mitigation capacity and for the provision of a wide range of ecosystem services using an integrative socio-ecological systems approach.

The study aims to provide the European Parliament with an overview of the challenges faced by the agricultural sector regarding the evolution of climate extreme events in the European Union. It highlights existing solutions to help farmers mitigate the effects of extreme weather events and recover from climate-related disasters.

The project "Climate Adaptation Naturally Nature-based Solutions for Municipalities" aims to communicate the potential of nature-based solutions for climate adaptation in cities and municipalities in a targeted manner and to support cities and municipalities in the implementation of such solutions with the help of practice-oriented applications. The project primarily addresses climate adaptation managers in the municipalities, but also representatives from urban planning and development, green space offices and nature conservation authorities, education and culture, water and wastewater management.

The study "Macro-economic / top-down assessment of climate impacts on the EU economy" by Ramboll, SEURECO and Ecologic Institute aims to assist the Commission by providing a solid assessment of the costs of climate impacts in the EU, with a particular focus on the economic and social (distributional) costs which, according to the existing scientific evidence, could be potentially very significant.

In addition to the protection of still intact peatlands, the restoration and sustainable management of previously drained peatland soils are important contributions for protecting biodiversity and the mitigation of climate change. In order to address these needs in a more targeted manner, the Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV) published the first National Peatland Protection Strategy in September 2021. Together with DUENE e.V., partner in Greifswald Moor Centrum, Ecologic Institute supports the implementation of the National Peatland Protection Strategy.

In the project "Mapping the adaptation frameworks regarding climate change adaptation indicators," Ramboll, Enerdata, and Ecologic Institute aim to support the EEA with its ongoing work on developing an adaptation indicators framework – linked to monitoring and reporting on adaptation, and that includes national and regional approaches. The specific objective is to produce an inventory of existing adaptation frameworks established at national (and sub-national) level which track and monitor adaptation actions, as well as to map indicators used in these frameworks for different sectors.

The consortium of Ramboll, CE Delft and Ecologic Institute supports the EEA with the study "Defining adaptation needs, counting adaptation finance and enabling actions at national and European level," which aims to provide knowledge products to feed into different EEA products and processes in the field of adaptation and adaptation finance.

This project is split into two work streams, assessing four CAP Strategic Plans and assessing approaches to enhance and safeguard biodiversity through carbon farming standards.

Climate Farm Demo is a unique pan-European network of Pilot Demo Farmers covering 28 countries and all pedo-climatic areas. Its overall aim it to accelerate the adoption of Climate Smart Farming (CSF) practices and solutions by farmers and all actors of the Climate Smart Agriculture Knowledge & Innovation Systems (AKIS) with a view of adapting agricultural production systems to climate change and of achieving a carbon-neutral agricultural sector by 2050, thereby meeting the targets of the EU Climate strategy. To reach this objective, the project adopts a Multi-Actor approach by connecting 1500 Pilot Demo Farmers and their Climate Farm Advisors (CFAs) at European and national levels to increase knowledge exchange and cross-fertilisation in their respective AKIS.

In this project, Ecologic Institute and IEEP outline gaps and provide recommendations for better integrating health concerns into EU policies. The project team assessed 20 EU policy documents on adaptation, biodiversity, water, waste, mobility, and cross-cutting issues and their integration of health in the broader context of climate change mitigation and adaptation policy.

This project will 1) identify good examples, new and innovative interventions to contribute to biodiversity and climate objectives of the CAP; 2) assess CAP Strategic Plan interventions that correspond to the biodiversity and climate ambitions in the four CAP Strategic Plans of Germany, France, Spain and Poland; 3) analyze whether these interventions correspond to the scientific evidence and whether they are relevant and sufficient; 4) consider co-benefits and trade-offs between different policy objectives.

The aim of the project, in short: 'Resilience and Climate Adaptation for North and Baltic Sea', is to develop concrete, cross-sectoral proposals for measures to strengthen marine protection and climate change adaptation. These proposals are to build on the field of action "Seas and Coasts" in the German Adaptation Strategy (DAS) and the Adaptation Action Plan and support the German government's planned marine strategy. Furthermore, the project is fundamentally intended to promote cross-sectoral dialogue on marine protection and climate change adaptation at national, European and regional level.

The aim of the project "Editorial preparation of the update of the strategy for adaptation to climate change in Baden-Württemberg" is the editorial preparation and graphical presentation of the update of the adaptation strategy in Baden-Württemberg.

The overall objective of the AMAREX project is to develop methods to enable the adaptation of stormwater management concepts to extreme events including heavy rain, heat and drought at the municipal level. In doing so, the analysis will consider the different extreme weather events in an integrative way.

In KliMaWerk, integrated measures and strategies are developed to increase hydrological and ecological resilience for watercourses affected by climate change. Special consideration is given to low-flow and drying situations, alternating with heavy rainfall events. The ecological functions of the water bodies as well as competing water body uses are taken into account through the integrated consideration of an entire water body catchment area. What is new here is the holistic view of the landscape water balance, instead of a narrow focus on individual spatial elements or individual user groups.

Over the past years, concerns and wide recognition about drought events and water scarcity have grown across the EU. The objectives of the assessment in this project are: to better understand national policies, strategies and plans on droughts in EU Member States, to gather detailed knowledge on existing drought management plans, including the use of exemptions under Art. 4(6) of the WFD, and to identify main challenges and lessons learnt in applying drought management, as well as the main issues to be addressed in order to improve the integration of drought management into river basin management planning. Ecologic Institute is part of the team that assesses national policies, strategies and plans on droughts in EU Member States based on document review and interviews with competent authorities and relevant stakeholders.