U.S. and European views on a number of environmental issues, such as climate change or genetically modified organisms, are frequently viewed as irreconcilable. Interestingly, there seems to be more mutual understanding and agreement on the sub-national level. In recent years, a number of transatlantic partnerships between regional and local institutions have evolved in order to exchange information and best practices in the environmental policy area. Senior Fellow Markus Knigge presented his research on the role, functioning and the effectiveness of transatlantic environmental partnerships at an AICGS workshop on 19 October 2005 in Washington, D.C.

On 12 October 2005, the Climate Policy Center and the German Marshall Fund of the United States conducted an international workshop designed to clarify and improve R&D strategy for climate change solutions. The one-day meeting helped experts in the United States and Europe focus on key strategic questions about relevant R&D priorities and policies. Senior Fellow Markus Knigge gave a presentation on the impacts of the German Renewable Energy Sources Act and the Eco-taxes on innovation and commercialization of clean technologies.

The G8 climate change outcomes, recent action in the U.S. Senate and developments on the subnational levels within the U.S. constitute a potential crossroad for transatlantic climate change policy. In light of these developments, Senior Fellow Markus Knigge participated in an expert policy maker seminar on subnational strategies for clean energy investment, technology deployment and innovation.

During an international capacity-building workshop for participants from Central and Eastern Europe which was convened from 29 September to 1 October 2005, Nicole Kranz discussed the application of a valuation of ecosystem services for the implementation of the requirements of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD).

"A Bridge to the Future: the High-Level Trans-Atlantic Dialogue on Climate Change" is a series of meetings bringing together a selected group of distinguished policy players from diverse backgrounds to explore possibilities for finding common ground on energy and climate policy across the Atlantic. Markus Knigge, Senior Fellow at Ecologic, participated in the second session of this dialogue, which was held in Washington, DC on 20 and 21 September 2005.

Recent reports on Europe's biological resources prove that the loss of biodiversity has not yet been halted despite efforts in this field. One reason for this is that the instruments used to address conservation issues do not always serve their purpose. The presentation given by Rainer Müssner at the International Association of Landscape Ecologists meeting in Northampton (IALE-UK) therefore dealt with procedural aspects of how to improve landscape planning (LP) and the codes of good farming practice (GFP).

After the catastrophic impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast of the United States and the City of New Orleans, a number of questions should be asked. Some of them have an important environmental policy dimension that might well reach beyond the immediate impact of the actual natural catastrophe and should cause a rethinking of established policies. Sascha Müller-Kraenner discusses the link between climate change and extreme weather events, rising oil prices, the role of government and whether New Orleans should be rebuilt.

In recent years, the Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC) has emerged as an increasingly important instrument of EU governance. Rather than relying on legally binding rules, the OMC works through the diffusion and evaluation of information. On 2 September 2005 Ingmar von Homeyer, Senior Fellow at Ecologic, gave a presentation on the application of the OMC in EU environmental policy at a workshop organised by the German Federal Office for Building and Spatial Planning (BBR) in Bonn.

At the 45th Congress of the European Regional Science Association (ERSA), Benjamin Görlach and Eduard Interwies presented some research results on the valuation of environmental and resource costs in Germany. The lecture took place as part of a special session on water and economics in the frame of the 45th ERSA Congress, held at the Free University of Amsterdam. The special session was organised with support by the Dutch RIZA, and was chaired by Eduard Interwies.

This year’s International Summer Academy of the University of Greifswald, “Energy and the Environment”, took place in Irkutsk, Russia, from 21 to 27 August 2005. The focus was "Implementing Kyoto – Opportunities and Challenges for Transition Countries". Christine Lucha and Dr. Camilla Bausch were asked to give a lecture on their experiences in the gathering of CO2-data needed for the establishment of the German National Allocation Plan (NAP), as part of the implementation of the new European Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS).

The worldwide emergence of public policy research organizations has occurred only recently. Compared to the US, the concept of "think tanks" is relatively new in Germany, and there are only a very limited number of institutions active in policy research and policy consulting. On 12 August 2005 Markus Knigge, Fellow at Ecologic, gave a presentation at the Bucerius Summer School on how Ecologic – one of the few German think tanks – contributes to environmental policy making on the German, European and international level.

Local and regional institutions are essential for effectively tackling local environmental problems and for implementing policies that address global environmental challenges. In recent years, a number of transatlantic partnerships between regional and local institutions have evolved in order to change information and best practices in the environmental policy area. The Heinrich Boell Foundation organised an informal dinner on 12 July 2005 during which Ecologic Fellow Markus Knigge gave a speech on the role, the functioning and the effectiveness of transatlantic environmental partnerships, and discussed his findings with the participants present.

The international workshop "Implementing the Economic Aspects of the WFD – Future Challenges in the Elbe River Basin" took place in Leipzig on 7 and 8 July 2005 and was mainly organised by Ecologic Associate Britta Pielen. In the course of the workshop, Benjamin Görlach gave an overview of the Member States' current approaches to assessing disproportionate costs in implementing the European Water Framework Directive.

Along with the emphasis on better regulation and lean governance in the European Union and its Member States, there has been renewed interest in policy evaluation and impact assessment. One of the main criteria in this context is cost-effectiveness, which demonstrates that environmental objectives have been achieved – or will be achieved – at least cost. At the EASY-ECO conference "Impact Assessment for a New Europe and Beyond", Benjamin Görlach was invited to present some insights on state of the art ex-post assessments of the cost-effectiveness of environmental policies.

Since 1999, the European Commission has been undertaking a series of Sustainable Impact Assessments (SIAs) of multilateral and regional trade agreements. On invitation, Markus Knigge presented at the EASY-ECO conference, organised by the Impact Assessment Research Centre in the University of Manchester's School of Environment and Development, a paper on the role of civil society engagement in these assessments. The presentation focused on the objectives of stakeholder consultations, methodologies for participation, the interplay with the negotiation process and the impediments for effective participation of civil society.