Publications

Taking as a basis a Bundesrat decision (Bundesrats-Drucksache 140/90), the Federal and Laender Ministers for the Environment decided at their 34th Conference at the beginning of the 90s to set up a Government/Laender working group on DIOXINS. This working group was commissioned inter alia with initiating and coordinating measuring programs, and documenting and evaluating data.

The dioxin reference program is founded on a decision by the 37th conference of Federal and Länder Ministers for the Environment of the Federal Republic of Germany, 21-22 November 1991.

Your balance sheet shows that energy consumption is down, and the emissions of dust particles have declined as well during the past few years. On the other hand, you find that considerable quantities of water are still being consumed, despite your efforts to reduce them. Should your company now focus on the water problem?

In conjunction with the implementation process of the Baltic 21, the Agenda 21 for the Baltic Sea Region, the Umweltbundesamt Berlin has asked the Institute for Tourism and Recreational Research in Northern Europe (N.I.T.), Kiel, to develop a system of indicators for the development of sustainable tourism that could be used by local and regional levels of planning.

Environmental quality criteria are established and used in most industrialized countries to determine whether organisms, public health or materials are jeopardized by hazardous substances. The criteria are determined by means of different methods, however, depending on the legal context and individual national characteristics.

The German Federal Environmental Agency had commissioned the Federal Environment Agency of Austria to organise the EU-Workshop “Monitoring of Environmental Impacts of Genetically Modified Plants” taking specifically into account Annex VII of the amendment to the EU-Directive 90/220/EEC.

The aim of the Twinning project was to strengthen the institutional structures and the regulatory capacity of the Czech authorities, which are involved in the enforcement of environmental law, and to prepare them to implement and enforce EC legislation.

A revision of the ISO 14001 environmental management systems standard is currently being negotiated internationally. The revision process seeks to integrate the practical experience and results gained by the users of the standard. Pertinent reports and case studies are available from many countries outside of the European Union.

In order to prevent a considerable deterioration in the detectability of time trends in riverine loads as a result of fluctuations in the runoff quality, an adjustment whereby the entry data are recomputed into an 'average' runoff level appears inevitable.

The report identifies synergies and conflicts in the implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Ramsar Convention on the protection of wetlands and the international forest process. Interlinkages between climate change and biodiversity conservation are discussed at the scientific and the policy level.

The present documentation offers the reader a perception of the development of water body management in Germany and shows the conditions under which this management is economically and ecologically successful today.

The Kyoto Protocol on Climate Protection extends not only to the greenhouse-gases CO2, methane and nitrous oxide, but also to the fluorinated gases (f-gases) HFC, PFC and SF6.