Science

Environmental labels can provide transparency and orientation

If Germany wants to live up to the requirements of the Paris Climate Agreement, its transport sector must quickly and drastically cut its greenhouse gas emissions. A recently published paper commissioned by the German Environment Agency confirms this conclusion and proposes concrete measures by which emissions can be reduced significantly and ensure that the climate action goals are achieved.

Capital investments which target the energy, transport and building sectors can help to limit the rise in Earth’s temperatures to less than 2 degrees. A new UBA study proposes the criteria by which public financial institutions like development banks should proceed and identifies which projects should no longer be funded.

On 10th and 11th of October 2017, the German Ministry for the Environment and UBA will host a Scientific Stakeholder Meeting on Nanomaterials in the Environment at the headquarters of UBA in Dessau-Roßlau, Germany.

Two years after two historic global agreements – the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change – the World Resources Forum Association invites leaders from government, business, research and NGOs to Geneva to talk about how to accelerate the Resource Revolution. How should we manage, coordinate, finance, track progress, and communicate about it?

A special issue publication "Human Biomonitoring 2016“ has just been published. It features 34 articles which present the current status of human biomonitoring (HBM) worldwide. The volume focuses on the scientific, political strategic, European and global perspectives of HBM. All articles are available open access and online for one year.

UBA's Daten zur Umwelt 2017 [Data on the Environment] publication offers a complete overview of all environmental sectors in Germany. It concludes that greater effort is required to achieve the national goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent until 2020; air quality in cities continues to be too heavily polluted. In contrast, drinking water quality remains good.

The ISC3 is located in the UN-city of Bonn and will be the driving force enabling emerging economies and developing countries to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The German Environment Agency wants better protection of drinking water against "mobile" contaminants, chemicals which have entered the water cycle because they do not bind to solids such as sand or activated carbon.

The German Environment Agency (UBA) is campaigning for rail freight noise reduction. Solutions include cladding train wheels and brakes to reduce noise directly at the source. Financial reward for quiet trains must be increased, for example with lower track access charges.