The analysis by Ariadne project partners examines Germany's climate foreign policy during the current legislative period. Beyond the international context, they also consider the organizational structure within the German government and the responsible ministries. The researchers conclude that Germany has been able to set the pace for international climate policy by transferring the responsibility for international climate policy to the Foreign Office and creating the role of Special Envoy for International Climate Policy. In contrast, the record of Germany's engagement in bilateral and plurilateral formats has yielded mixed results.
This paper addresses a gap by providing a conceptual basis to further the understanding of security implications of the EU’s transformation to a net-zero economy. It first defines the aspects of security under consideration (Section 2) and proposes a typology to classify fossil fuel exporting countries based on their exposure to world market prices, their capacity to adjust and their importance to the EU in terms of security issues (Section 3). It then takes stock of policy options that can be adopted in other countries to reduce adjustment costs to a changed economic environment (Section 4) and discusses how the EU can support these policies (Section 5). Finally, it highlights key implications for EU policy makers (Section 6).
On 13 September 2022, the online workshop "Strengthening supply chain resilience: identifying climate risks and taking adaptation measures" was held as part of the Climate Adaptation Week organized by the BMUV. The workshop documentation summarizes further information on the various presentations and recommendations, including further links.
This report discusses the potential role of green hydrogen in achieving a climate-neutral economy, focusing on sectors where electrification is challenging. It highlights the necessity for green hydrogen to be produced using renewable energy to align with climate neutrality goals. The report outlines necessary components for establishing a global market, including tracking systems, standards, and governance mechanisms to ensure compliance and foster international trade.
Based on the available literature, this report explores the impacts of production and trade-distorting domestic support in agriculture on climate (i.e., greenhouse gas emissions) and the environment (i.e., water, biodiversity, and land degradation).
This insightful Handbook, by Dr. Michael Jakob, provides a comprehensive overview of the most recent developments in the academic debate on the numerous and complex linkages between international trade and climate change. Offering critical and empirically-based perspectives on the future of international trade policy, this timely Handbook is crucial reading for scholars, researchers and graduate students in political science, public policy and climate research. Policymakers will also benefit from its unique and insightful policy recommendations.
In an integrated global economy, trade policy and climate policy are closely intertwined. In this paper, Ecologic Institute's Dr. Michael Jakob adopts an interdisciplinary approach to provide an overview of the key debates in economics, political science, and legal studies related to globalization and climate change. He identifies a number of emerging issues that deserve increased attention in future research in this direction.
Christiane Gerstetter, Senior Fellow in Ecologic Institute's Legal Team, examines in this book how the dispute settlement bodies of the World Trade Organization (WTO) have decided non-trade cases. These are cases in which national measures that serve non-trade objectives such as environmental and health protection are under judicial scrutiny.
In the context of the European Green Deal, the introduction and design of border adjustment measures is currently subject to much controversy. Upon invitation to contribute to the series "Green Deal reloaded" by the Stiftung Genshagen and the Institut Montaigne, Dr. Camilla Bausch (Ecologic Institute) analyzes the opportunities and challenges provided by the proposed border adjustment mechanism.
This study, co-authored by Raffaele Piria, analyzes energy industry and policy developments on hydrogen in the U.S. and develops an agenda for cooperation between Germany and the U.S. in this area. In addition to the foreign policy discourse, there are many opportunities for cooperation between Germany and the U.S. in the field of hydrogen.
In Europe, limited information is available about the environmental characteristics of the vehicles stocks and of traded used vehicles in terms of vehicle's air pollutant and CO2 emissions. In this report Ecologic Institute and Fraunhofer ISI explore available national and European data sources of vehicle stocks and trade throughout Europe and compile the available vehicle characteristics. Based on the available characteristics, the authors derive the environmental performance of vehicle stocks and traded used vehicles and assess respective regional differences in the environmental performance of the vehicles stocks and of used vehicle trade flows. The report is available for download.
With the adoption of the Paris Agreement, the world of climate policy has changed, with important implications for the debate on carbon leakage. This report looks at how the risk of carbon leakage changes for different constellations of climate policy targets, how the incentives for countries have changed, and what carbon leakage entails for global emissions under these constellations.
Many of today’s large societal challenges, such as climate change mitigation, resource security, urbanisation and migration require a fundamental transformation of the way we use natural resources. However, our understanding of the stocks and flows of materials and energy (the physical economy) is highly fragmented and involves significant knowledge gaps. The MinFuture project developed a framework aimed at providing guidance on how to perform more systematic monitoring of the physical economy, as well as steps helping to implement such a system. The MinFuture Policy Brief is available for download.
The MinFuture project has developed a framework aimed at providing guidance on how to perform a more systematic physical accounting, as well as steps to help implement such a system. The MinFuture Business Brief is available for download.
Robust strategies for sustainable resource management depend on a solid understanding of the physical economy – the anthropogenic stocks and flows of matter and energy. MinFuture provides a framework for the description and monitoring of the physical economy using Material Flow Analysis (MFA). It distinguishes and visualises seven components, which are organised in a hierarchical structure (pyramid). This factsheet presents the framework and summarizes the project results.
The dispute settlement mechanism of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is one of the most active international courts. How the WTO's adjudicators decide cases is the topic of a book chapter authored by Christiane Gerstetter, Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute. The book, entiteld "The Judicialization of International Law: A Mixed Blessing?" is edited by Andreas Follesdal and Geir Ulfstein and published by Oxford University Press. It deals with the influence of decisions by international courts on international law.
The MinFuture website provides an overview of the project objectives, structure and partners as well as events and news related to relevant issues of the project. Furthermore, project outputs such as deliverables, policy briefs and publications are regularly promoted on the website. Ecologic Institute is responsible for the concept, design and programming.
Cross-border trade and the rules governing it impact consumers. Trade has benefits for consumers, such as access to goods not available domestically. Yet it also has certain risks, such as exposure to traded goods that may be dangerous. Against this background, consumer organisations on both sides of the Atlantic have been discussing what a consumer-friendly trade policy could look like. Christiane Gerstetter and Lena Donat of Ecologic Institute's Legal Team have compiled a study examining what complaint mechanisms for consumer organisations concerning international trade agreements could look like.
This T20 Policy Brief sends a loud exhortation to the leaders meeting in the G20 Summit in Hamburg in July 2017. T20 or "Think 20" is a network of think tanks in the G20 countries, and 23 experts in 13 think tanks in 8 countries contributed to this policy brief. Ecologic Institute founder R. Andreas Kraemer, Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), led the drafting, and Benjamin Boteler, Ina Krüger, and Grit Martinez of Ecologic Institute contributed. The policy brief is available for download.
In principle, increased trade resulting from trade agreements can offer consumers access to goods and services that are less expensive or of higher quality. At the same time, there is a risk that rules in trade and investment agreements limit the sovereign right of states to adopt measures for consumer protection at the domestic level. Hence, much depends on how these agreements are designed. A study, compiled by Christiane Gerstetter, Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute and Christian Pitschas, provides an overview of consumer-related rights in recent international trade agreements. The study is available fro download.
The EU Action Plan against Wildlife Trafficking adopted by the European Commission on 26 February 2016 is the most recent EU initiative to tackle wildlife crime. On 8 September 2016, the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety of the European Parliament (ENVI) held a workshop in Brussels on ‘Delivering and enforcing the EU Action Plan Against Wildlife Trafficking’. With support from the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP), Ecologic Institute organized the workshop and compiled the proceedings for this publication. The proceedings summarize the presentations and discussions.
The objective of this briefing was to provide Members with an overview of the key issues at stake at the CITES COP 17 and to introduce the new role of the EU as a single Party entity. A short overview of the history of CITES was provided, along with the current positions of the main Parties on key issues of importance. The brief identified main conclusions and recommendations for Members of the ENVI Committee to establish their own perspectives on the subject of CITES and the potential role of the EU. The briefing was conducted using published documents, press releases, official position papers, studies and other relevant sources from national, international and EU institutions and NGOs. The document is available for download.
The final synthesis of the 40 month long EFFACE research project is now available. The report is addressed at decision-makers and presents core findings from the EFFACE project in an accessible language. The final synthesis is available for download.
According to Chinese authorities, the coronavirus spread to humans from wildlife at a wildlife market in Wuhan. Most likely, Ebola and AIDS also originated from wildlife. Besides the serious threats to biodiversity and sustainable development, the risk for human health is thus an additional reason to strengthen the efforts to combat wildlife trafficking and other forms of wildlife crime. Over the last years, Ecologic Institute has published several studies on environmental compliance and crime related to wildlife crime. The most comprehensive study on wildlife crime was presented to the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) of the European Parliament in Brussels in April 2016.
In a book chapter, Christiane Gerstetter, Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute, analyses the impact that the planned Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnerhip (TTIP) between the EU and the US could have on climate change. The book chapter is written in German. It is part of an edited volume entitled "Globalisierung, Freihandel und Umweltschutz in Zeiten von TTIP", which deals with various facets of the trade and environment debate.
Christiane Gerstetter, Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute, prepared a discussion paper on "The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and its relevance for global sustainable land use" as part of the GLOBALANDS project. The paper is available for download.
In this article, published in the journal Frankfurter Hefte, Christiane Gerstetter from Ecologic Instiute takes a stand on environmental aspects in the discussion on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) that is currently negotiated between the EU and the USA.
A recent study provides the members of the European Parliament Committee on Environment, Public Health, and Food Safety (ENVI Committee) with the needed expertise to monitor the ongoing negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement. The study was co-authored by Ecologic Institute, Bio IS, and the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) and serves as a follow-up to a 2013 study entitled "Legal Implications of TTIP for the Acquis Communautaire in ENVI Relevant Sectors."
This study conducted by Ecologic Institute with support from the Heinrich Boell Foundation aims at providing factual background to the debate on regulatory cooperation within the TTIP. The study looks at whether fears are justified that regulatory cooperation could lead to loweer levels of protection in the EU (and to a lesser extent) in the US and parliamentary processes being bypassed. The study is available for download.
Christiane Gerstetter and Max Grünig, Senior Fellows at the Ecologic Institute, have prepared a submission for the EU Commission's online consultation on investment protection in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The submission is available for download.
An important part of the work for the "European Union Action to Fight Environmental Crime" (EFFACE) project, coordinated by Ecologic Institute, is the analysis of the costs and impacts of environmental crime. The work includes the collection and analysis of data and information on the extent and the impacts of environmental crime and attempts to estimate the economic costs of the different types of environmental crime. The report "Understanding the Damages of Environmental Crime" is available for download.
Determining environmental impacts of products is complex. In this study, BIO IS, the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) and the Ecologic Institute investigated approaches for verifying that claims made by companies on the environmental properties of products or their own overall environmental performance are correct. The study was commissioned by the European Commission, DG Environment. The Ecologic Institute contributed an analysis on the law of the World Trade Organziation as far as relevant for related policy measures. The report is available for download.
As renewable energy sources are more widely used and corresponding support systems expanded, the economic significance of the sector is also growing. This, in turn, also leads to a growing potential for trade disputes involving renewable energy production. This study on renewable energy law presents the international legal framework relevant to support systems for renewable energy, notably WTO law. A particular focus is on local-content requirements existing in this sectors as well as on trade remedy procedures. The study (in German) is available for download, including an English summary.
This short study that Ecologic Institute produced for the Greens in the European Parliament, examines the competitiveness of European Eco-Industries. The key finding is that Eco-Industries have been a source of economic growth, particularly at times when other parts of the economy contracted. The short study is available for download.
In this study for the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Christiane Gerstetter and Nils Meyer-Ohlendorf of Ecologic Institute look at the "I" in TTIP, investment rules in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership under negotiation between the US and the EU. They assess the impact of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) rules on environmental regulation by analysing existing case law. The study is available for download.
Ecologic Institute and BIO IS were commissioned by the European Parliament to investigate the potential impacts of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) on the EU's environmental and food safety policies and the EU's right to regulate. TTIP is currently being negotiated between the US and the EU. The study provides recommendations regarding the role of the European Parliament in the negotiation of TTIP. The study is available for download.
The objectives of the report were to provide information on how inspections are currently being undertaken for selected Member States in the policy areas of water, nature protection and CITES so as to identify their strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, combined with information from other studies, the study developed options that could be taken forward at EU level to strengthen inspection and control and it assessed the impacts of those options.
Information on the environmental characteristics of products, such as on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions caused during their production or their energy efficiency, are essential in order to allow consumers to make informed choices on which products to buy. This study investigated different design options for product-related environmental information addressed at consumers.
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.
The study "An Assessment of the Balancing of EU Development Objectives with Other Policies and Priorities", to which Ecologic Institutes scientists Christiane Gerstetter and Jenny Kirschey contributed, evaluates the coherence between the EU's development policies and its other policies. Its authors describe the positive and negative impacts of these policies on development priorities and provide recommendations to achieve better policy coherence. The study was commissioned by the European Parliament and is available for download.
From 15 to 16 October 2009, the Center for Foreign Trade Law of the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster hosted its 14th Foreign Trade Law Day, focusing on energy and climate change. At this conference, Benjamin Görlach, economist for the Ecologic Institute, delivered a presentation entitled "Economic Instruments between Kyoto and Copenhagen: quo vadis Climate Protection?" This presentation is now available as an article in the conference volume.
In their policy paper "International Trade Policy in the Context of Climate Change Imperatives" for the Committee on International Trade, Christiane Gerstetter, Michael Mehling and Tanja Srebotnjak examine the relationship between trade and climate change as well as the potential of trade and trade policies to contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation.
At the EU level, there is great need for legal reforms concerning the liability of enterprises for violations of human rights and environmental norms abroad. This is the result of a study co-authored by Christiane Gerstetter, Fellow Ecologic Legal and pro bono lawyer for the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights.
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.
Illegal fishing and logging, and the international trade in illegally sourced fish and wood products, cause enormous environmental and economic damage. Consumer countries contribute to the problem by importing fish and timber without ensuring legality – a problem the EU tries to address with two new regulations. In this briefing paper, Duncan Brack, Heike Baumüller and Katharina Umpfenbach compare the recently adopted EU regulations on illegal fish and timber products. The authors contrast the very different approaches and highlight areas that might need further strengthening.
In their policy paper for the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation’s Dialogue on Globalization section, Nils Meyer-Ohlendorf and Christiane Gerstetter of Ecologic Legal, shed light on the most important aspects of the relationship between trade and climate change policies. They investigate which trade-related policies should be adopted to combat climate change and review the compatibility of those measures with the law of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Particular attention is given to issues that are of relevance to developing countries. The first focus of the paper is on the transfer of climate-friendly technologies to developing countries.
More and more instruments require the internalisation of greenhouse gas emissions costs. Yet, it is very unlikely that a single global price for carbon will prevail. A frequently voiced concern is that states with stringent climate policies will place domestic industries at a disadvantage relative to competitors in states with less ambitious climate efforts. In this chapter, published in the briefing paper "Competitive distortions and leakage in a world of different carbon prices" for the European Parliament, the Ecologic authors Michael Mehling, Nils Meyer-Ohlendorf und Ralph Czarnecki analyse restrictive trade measures to offset the regulatory burden of climate policies, particularly border adjustments, from a legal point of view.
In recent years, the debate on trade and the environment seemed to lose some of its earlier controversy: after a string of highly polarizing cases before the WTO, the Appellate Body’s Article 21.5 Implementation Report in the Shrimp/Turtle case appeared to finally herald a period of reconciliation between free trade and environmental concerns. Upon closer analysis, however, this assessment proves to be misleading: as a matter of substantive law, the chasm between both issue areas is still substantial.
The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) is the most recent piece in the current regime complex on plant genetic resources. In their article for the Journal of World Intellectual Property, Christiane Gerstetter, Benjamin Görlach, Kirsten Neumann and Dora Schaffrin investigate the legal relationship between the ITPGRFA, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the TRIPS Agreements of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Acts of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV).
Ecologic led a study examining the potential contributions that trade policy could make to combating climate change. The objective of the study was to provide Members of the European Parliament with an assessment of the relationships between international trade and climate change, and to identify possible means of using trade policy options to combat the problem. The study examined the economic, policy and legal aspects of the issue and included a quantitative evaluation of carbon dioxide emissions associated with specific traded and EU-produced goods. The study is available for download.
Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) play a substantial role in the financing of infrastructure in developing countries. As the activities of ECAs are backed-up by public resources, national governments have the power to set guidelines for ECA lending policies. Most governments include social and environmental aspects in their ECA guidelines. This book section has a closer look at the role of transparency, information disclosure and participation in the cover decisions of ECAs.
What is the role of civil society actors in the assessment of trade agreements with regard to their sustainability impact? The book chapter authored by Markus Knigge and Nicole Kranz analyses the underlying processes and contexts and makes suggestions for the effective involvement of stakeholders in the assessment process at the EU level.