<p>&#13; Climate change threatens the access to essential resources for millions of people. Moreover, climate change directly threatens the lives of people. The conflicts that might result from climate change could escalate into violent conflicts within and between states. In his presentation, Christoph H. Stefes, Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute, discussed under which circumstances conflicts might turn violent and how the Western community could assist in preventing or solving these conflicts.</p>&#13;

As it implements policy reforms, China needs think tanks to work across traditional divisions of government, contest received wisdom, and produce new ideas.  R. Andreas Kraemer of Ecologic Institute addressed the importance of environmental think tanks in jointly meeting global challenges at the conference on "Think Tanks in Global Comparison – Modes of Operations" convened by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, on 25 and 26 August 2010.&#13;

<p>&#13; Hessen's State Ministry for Environment, Energy, Agriculture and Consumer Protection and its partners held a half-day conference on the themes of emissions trading and climate policy in the USA as part of a year-long series of events. Dominic Marcellino, Fellow, Ecologic Institute Washington, gave a presentation on the current political situation in the United States with respect to climate change.</p>&#13;

<p>&#13; Civil society groups are spreading the word on the upcoming 2012 Earth Summit, a United Nations meeting on international environmental governance. Ecologic Institute’s Emily McGlynn stressed the importance of youth participation at a recent UNFCCC side event on preparation for the Earth Summit.</p>&#13;

<p>&#13; Tanja Srebotnjak represented Ecologic Institute at the largest gathering of statisticians and practitioners of statistics in North America, the Joint Statistical Meetings, which this year took place in the Olympic City of Vancouver, Canada. Dr. Srebotnjak presented a paper on small area estimation of local health effects and risk factors illustrating her modeling and validation framework for the prevalent lack of health care insurance in the US.</p>&#13;

<p>&#13; The 7th Greifswald International Summer Academy "Energy and the Environment" was put on by the University of Greifswald. Dominic Marcellino, Fellow at Ecologic Institute in Washington, spoke to the participants, delivering remarks on some of the ethical implications of expanded renewable energy production, specifically wind.</p>&#13;

<p>&#13; "Greening Investment Standards for the Financial Sector" was the subject of a workshop report by R. Andreas Kraemer of Ecologic Institute to the conference on "Mobilising Private Capital to Reduce Climate Change: Instruments and Policies to Mobilise International Green Energy Investment Berlin".  The conference was hosted by the German Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation, and Nuclear Safety, an the KFW Entwicklungsbank in Berlin on 29 and 30 June 2010.</p>&#13;

<p>&#13; In a Faculty and Expert Seminar, R. Andreas Kraemer of Ecologic Institute delivered the Keynote Address to an audience of mainly US and Canadian university and college faculty.  The group travelled to Berlin and Brandenburg to study local, regional and national approaches to sustainability.  The Studienform Berlin organised the study tour as part of the Transatlantic Climate Bridge.</p>&#13;

<p> In recent years, it has almost become conventional wisdom that climate change is a threat to human security. Both politicians and scientists have called climate change a conflict trigger or multiplier. However, empirically-based research on the relationship between climate change, resource scarcity and conflict is often absent. At the workshop on &quot;Climate-induced migration in the MENA&quot;, Maria Berglund presented the FP7 project &quot;Climate change, Hydro-conflicts and Human Security (CLICO)&quot;, aiming to address these research gaps.</p>

<p>&#13; The 2010 Senior Congressional Staff Study Tour of Germany brought Chiefs of Staff of members of the US Congress to Berlin and Cologne to take stock of the political situation in Germany after the federal election in September 2009 and before the vote in North Rhine-Westphalia in May 2010. On invitation by The United States Association of Former Members of Congress (USAFMC), R. Andreas Kraemer of Ecologic Institute led a discussion on the current trends and outlook for energy policy in Germany and the European Union.</p>&#13;

<p>&#13; In 2010 the German Energy Agency GmbH (dena) and the German American Chambers of Commerce (AHK USA) organized the 2nd German American Energy Conference. This year’s conference was themed „Promising Markets for Renewables and Energy Efficiency”. It offered information about current trends and support frameworks within U.S. and EU energy markets and how companies can benefit from them. The event attracted more than 400 participating experts and high level speakers. Within a panel discussion Stephanie Schlegel, Fellow und Coordinator Bioenergy and Agriculture at the Ecologic Institute spoke about opportunities for German biomass companies in the U.S. market and the relevance of sustainability requirements for the further development of transatlantic bioenergy markets.</p>&#13;

<p>&#13; Are the levels of cost recovery, investment and financing sufficient to ensure affordable access to freshwater and sanitation services?</p>&#13;

<p>&#13; In this presentation Ecologic Senior Fellow Ingmar von Homeyer provided an overview of the development of EU environmental governance from the early 1970s up to the present. He argued that EU environmental governance can be described as an amalgam of four to five environmental governance regimes which have successively been layered on top of each other over the past 35 years.</p>&#13;

<p> Decision makers and policy experts from both sides of the Atlantic converged in Brussels to discuss the relationship of the European Union and the United States in a changing and multipolar world.</p>