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.

Scaling up nature-based solutions (NbS) to deliver their full range of potential benefits requires coordinated efforts to enhance technical skills, devise innovative financing mechanisms, and improve governance. The ‘EU-LAC Policy Dialogue on Nature-based Solutions’ – an initiative led by the Directorate General of Research and Innovation of the European Commission – aims to establish a regular exchange between the EU and Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) regions around nature-based solutions (NbS) to advance policy uptake and action in both regions.

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.

The project's ambition is to contribute to the systemic transformation needed for a nature-positive economy through collaborative multi-stakeholder research and innovation to provide clarity and guidance for policy, industry and society.

Ecologic Institute is member of the European Topic Centre on Biodiversity and Ecosystems (ETC-BE) which works with the European Environment Agency (EEA) under a Framework Partnership Agreement for the period from 2023-2026. The ETC BE is a Consortium of 24 European organisations with expertise in the topic area of terrestrial, freshwater and marine biodiversity and ecosystems. Biodiversity and ecosystems is one of five strategic work areas in the EEA-Eionet Strategy 2021-2030.

The project aims to provide the European Commission with information on how to best use the EU budget in the post-2027 MFF to achieve the ambitious environmental and climate objectives in an effective and efficient way. The results of this project will feed into the political processes that will shape the post-2027 MFF.

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.

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.

This project for the European Commission's Climate Directorate General investigates policies that put a price on agricultural emissions and reward farmers and others in the land use sector for sequestering carbon on their land.

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.

The UN Decade for Ecosystem Restoration offers the opportunity to link thematic areas that were previously treated rather separately, as well as to clarify their interdependencies and to create synergies. This includes, for example, linking the topic of ecosystem restoration with different topics in the areas of biodiversity and climate. To illustrate these linkages, Ecologic Institute is preparing a total of 10 policy papers for the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). These papers are intended to support key German actors in implementing the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration as part of the overarching GIZ project "Supporting the Design and Implementation of the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration" (DEER).

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.

Ursula von der Leyen (President of the European Commission) described the European Green Deal as "Europe's man-on-the-moon moment". With this plan, the European Union aims to achieve climate neutrality by 2050, protect and enhance nature, and sustainably transform the European economy and society. But what exactly is the European Green Deal? Which role does it play in our everyday life? And what challenges does it pose? In our podcast and webinar series "Green deal – Big Deal?" we take a critical look at these questions and discuss various aspects of the European Green Deal with experts from policy, business and science.

In this project, Ecologic Institute in cooperation with Oeko-Institut and Giessen University, analyses measures for climate-friendly soil use and the challenges and opportunities of transfer-based instruments as well as other funding mechanisms to promote these measures. In addition, current legal and political framework conditions for nature-based solutions and climate-friendly soil use will be examined.

This project supports the EU Commission's DG CLIMA to develop and evaluate different options for certifying carbon removal solutions. Carbon removals, also known as negative emissions, include nature-based technologies such as afforestation and soil carbon, and technology-based approaches, including carbon capture and storage from direct air or bioenergy. To reach the EU's 2050 goal of climate neutrality, alongside mitigation of GHG emissions, the EU must remove substantial amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. This project assesses existing knowledge and identifies policy options to increase carbon removals across Europe.

The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has contracted Ecologic Institute and its partner EMVIS Consultant Engineers to provide assistance related to the identification of opportunities for Nature Based Solutions for Water Security (NBS4WS) in Europe. As part of its work on water security in Europe, The Nature Conservancy is preparing two reports: Investing in Nature for European Water Security and Urban Water Blueprint for Europe.

The goal of the European Environment Agency's European Topic Centre on Biological Diversity (ETC/BD) is to collect and monitor data on biodiversity, as well as issues and ecological pressures related to biodiversity. This data is used to establish the state of Europe's ecosystems to support the assessment, development, and implementation of EU policies such as the Nature Directives and the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. Ecologic Institute is supporting the ETC/BD since 2014 with data collection and assessment on ecosystem status and trends, policy analysis, and monitoring. Ecologic Institute is also conducting multiple assessments to contribute to the European Environment Agency's assessment reports.

Nature-based solutions (NBS) provide an integrated approach to climate change mitigation and adaptation in urban areas, while simultaneously offering a range of additional benefits. This project aims to increase the awareness of NBS in Poland as a cost-effective urban climate mitigation measure and build capacity, knowledge and skills among city officials, municipal staff, and landscape planners to enable the conceptual and technical design and implementation of NBS.

With three quarters of the European Union's population living in cities and further increases expected, societies are increasingly facing socio-political shifts and marginalization. Limited availability of physical space, changing urban demographics, and increasing cultural diversity compound these challenges and create issues like high crime rates, social inequality, poverty, health threats, and unemployment. Some areas are particularly vulnerable, such as economically deprived, abandoned and neglected urban areas with a low share of green spaces. The Horizon2020 funded project “CLEVER Cities” responded to these challenges by designing and implementing locally tailored nature-based solutions (NbS) to foster sustainable and socially inclusive urban regeneration.

Green and Blue infrastructure (GBI) in cities holds large potential to effectively address emerging global challenges, such as climate change impacts, increasing urbanisation and declining access to nature, as it can deliver multiple societal, ecological and economic benefits in parallel. This multifunctional potential of GBI has only recently begun to gain weight in research, policy and planning and has yet to be fully unlocked. The EU-funded BiodivERsA project 'ENABLE' responds to this gap by utilizing a transdisciplinary systems approach to examine the relationship between social-ecological dynamics and GBI's potential to meet multiple goals, including biodiversity conservation and climate change adaptation. The four-year research project, funded by the BiodivERsA network, is led by the Stockholm Resilience Centre and supported by Ecologic Institute and nine other research partners.

Nature is important for the urban environment: trees grant shade during the summer months, while parks and lakes function as areas for relaxation, as places where the urban population comes together, and as space where children can experience nature and learn about it in an active way. Furthermore, the wellbeing of the urban population thrives under the benefits of nature, which include an extensive list of ecological benefits. These include, for example, climate change mitigation and a pleasant urban climate. Ecologic Institute is part of the European research project NATURVATION, which analyses nature-based solutions in urban areas.

The goal of the European Environment Agency's European Topic Centre on Biological Diversity (ETC-BD) is to collect and monitor data on biodiversity as well as issues and ecological pressures related to biodiversity. This data is used to establish the state of Europe's ecosystems to support the assessment, development, and implementation of EU policies such as the Habitats Directive. Ecologic Institute is supporting the ETC-BD with data collection and assessment on ecosystem status and mapping, policy analysis, and monitoring. Ecologic Institute is also conducting multiple assessments to contribute to the European Environment Agency's assessment reports.