Publications

In June 2006, the “Thematic Strategy on Sustainable Use of Pesticides" was accepted by the European Commission.

If EU27 adheres to its current unilateral climate target of 20 percent less than 1990 emission levels by 2020, it would send out a weak signal both to the international community and to the actors involved.

Summary of the evaluation of the Integrated Energy and Climate Programme (IEKP), which where adopted in the so-called Meseberg Decisions. In August 2007, key elements for an Integrated Energy and Climate Programme (IEKP) were adopted in the so-called Meseberg Decisions. This programme will contribute towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Germany by 40 % by the year 2020.

The VIIIth International Conference on Toxic Cyanobacteria (ICTC), held in September 2010 Istanbul, Turkey, included a session in which scientists and regulators reported approaches to controlling hazards from toxic cyanobacteria implemented or discussed in their country, as well as awareness of the issue.

In Germany, as in almost all industrial countries, active pharmaceutical substances can now be found in virtually all water bodies and occasionally also in drinking water. Even though the concentrations in question tend to be very low, there are initial signs of their  impact on aquatic life. There is no evidence as yet of any acute consequences for human health.

Part: a departure into a new era - the elements of a sustainable energy supply ; Resource efficiency - a key skill for sustainable societies ; Sustainable chemistry - an elemantary building block of a Green Economy. Germany has decided the transformation of its energy sys-tem. The new energy era requires a fundamental transfor-mation of energy supply.

The new office building of the Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt, UBA) was erected as a model project for sustainable building with very ambitious goals. In order to significantly reduce the consumption of fossil energy sources, the energy demand of the building to be constructed had to be as low as possible to allow sustainable operation.

In 1999, Georgia signed the UNECE Convention on Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes as well as the Protocol on Water and Health. One of the Protocol goals is the protection of human health from waterborne disease and ensuring well-being in the framework of sustainable development in all the relevant national, transboundary and international contexts.

Transport accounted for 23% of global CO2 emissions in 2007. It is expected that both the overall emissions and the demand for energy in transport will continue to rise in the next decades unless appropriate policy measures are introduced.

The study proves the feasibility of a technical realisation of Article 10(1) of the BPD and elaborates a first concept for the cumulative environmental exposure assessment of biocides.

The ECHA Guidance Documents R.12 to R.18 include detailed provisions on how to conduct an exposure assessment as part of the Chemical Safety Report. The guidance documents, however, only restrictedly address the consideration of a substance’s emissions into the environment, if the local releases from various uses of the same substance result in a cumulative exposure.

Emissions from building products considerably impair the quality of indoor air. The AgBB scheme has been used to evaluate the emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOC) from building products. The hygienic evaluation according to the AgBB scheme requires product-specific measurement methods which are already available for a number of products.