Publications

This report summarizes the results of the project ‘CORINE Land Cover 2000 – Germany’, which was performed within the framework of the European-wide project CLC2000 and which generated up-to-date maps of land use and land cover and their changes within the last 10 years for Germany.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its follow-up regulations include special commitments on transmission of emission data as well as the data basis (activity data) and applied methodologies. In connection with the international agreements on climate protection, information on emissions have also to be reported to the European Commission.

At the VIth Internatitonal Conference on Toxic Cyanobacteria, held from 21 – 27th of June 2004 in Bergen, Norway, 190 participants from 36 countries presented results covering a wide range of aspects of research on toxic cyanobacteria.

Before the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on Climate Protection, the fluorinated greenhouse gases HFCs, PFCs, and SF6 (F-gases) aroused little public attention. Since then, the standards on surveying and reporting on national emissions have been rising constantly.

We have compiled this consumer-oriented publication in response to the huge demand for brochures and pamphlets on the subjects “A healthy home” and “Indoor Air Quality.” It is not surprising that there is such great interest in this topic: after all, in this part of the world we spend somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of the day indoors – most of that at home!

It had been the aim of the present study to characterize, on the one hand, the PBDE background exposure in Germany and to assess whether any health risks could be involved in PBDE intake by the infant through breastfeeding.

As a Party to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change, since 1994 Germany has been obliged to prepare, publish and regularly update national emission inventories of greenhouse gases. In February 2005, the Kyoto Protocol entered into force.

With the long awaited entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol on 16 February 2005 there is hope that the deadlock in international climate negotiations can be overcome. Still, the USA, as the largest emitter, has rejected emission reductions and developing countries will not act before industrialized countries (including the USA) have demonstrated substantial action.

At irregular intervals the German Federal Environment Agency commissions noise measurements according to the Statistical Pass-By method (SPB method). These measurements allow – in a statistical sense – an accurate assessment of the noise emissions of the German vehicle fleet.

- The biomass ordinance was able to stimulate the bioenergy market in a very short period of time. - The effectiveness of the ordinance in combination with the Renewable Energy Sources Act in general is evident and without doubt. - The trend towards bigger plants in the case of demolition wood will have to be examined thoroughly.

The subject of this legal opinion is the permissibility of introducing taxation of aviation gasoline used on domestic flights. Currently, aviation gasoline intended for use in commercial aviation is exempt from mineral oil tax pursuant to Section 4 I No. 3) of the Mineral Oil Tax Act, with the result that air transport has a clear tax advantage over other modes of transport.

Sustainable transport development planning is keyed to quality targets of a long-term nature which together describe a holistic vision – in this case relating to mobility and transport – of a city or community. Quality targets have this name because they set out quality requirements for future development.