Publications

Footprint analysis reveals the appropriation of land resources from a consumer’s perspective. This report presents a novel hybrid land-flow accounting method for the calculation of land footprints, employing a globally consistent top-down approach and combining physical with environmental-economic accounting.

This report provides an in-depth review of the current state of the art in measuring land footprints. It identifies differences in available accounting methods and indicates their shortcomings. It offers options and gives clear recommendations for the further development of actual and virtual global biomass and land flow accounting methods.

With our demand for food, feed, energetic and material use of biomass extensive land use is associated, both at home and abroad. This entails considerable environmental effects. Therefore, land use should be measured more in detail. In this research project, area based land footprint indicators of biomass consumption were further developed and calculated based on global data sets.

In December 2015 Parties adopted the Paris Agreement at the 21st session of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In its Article 2 governments agreed to limit global warming to “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and to pursue to limit it to 1.5°C (UNFCCC 2015).

Since 2016, there are new legal requirements for the assessment for nutrients and substances of the waters in Germany. New assessment procedures for hydromorphology were developed. These assessment instruments are described in the brochure "Waters in Germany: Status and Assessment". The results of the assessment clarify the still open problems in water protection.

This Scientific Opinion Paper reports about current plans of the European Commission to issue a delegated act on communication of emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOC) from construction products in form of “VOC classes”.

In its indicator report Data on the Environment 2017, the German Environment Agency gives a comprehensive overview of the state of the environment, the causes of environmental pollution and leverage points for improvement.

This paper correlates closely with the previous position paper of the Resources Commission which was published in 2016: Ein ressourceneffizientes Europa

You are visiting the Antarctic for private or professional reasons? You are about to discover the “White Continent” for the first time or you are planning a revisit? We wish you a pleasant journey – and would like to contribute with these guidelines to a safe and environmentally sustainable stay in the Antarctic.

How can developing countries maintain development targets, cope with unavoidable consequences of climate change and contribute to climate protection in parallel in a warming world? This question calls for the derivation of climate resilient future pathways that consider the synergies between adaptation, mitigation and sustainable development action.

In this research project the indoor air quality in energy-efficient buildings has been investigated with regard to odours and volatile organic compounds. The original aim of the study was to investigate the indoor air quality of energy-efficient retrofitted buildings using the example of the German Environment Agency’s (Umweltbundesamt, UBA) Bismarckplatz office building in Berlin.

Big cities are by definition exciting, diverse and vibrant, but also loud and crowded, claustrophobic and exhausting. How do we want to live in our cities in the future? Is it at all possible to create an urban environment with environmentally friendly transport, low noise levels, green spaces and a functional mix? Yes, such a city is possible.