Umweltbundesamt
This report examines the political context and reasoning of these sources of potential demand to depart from the established system and offers suggestions for further reforms or measures to take to preserve some of the benefits of the erstwhile framework.read more
The Blue Angel is the German Government’s label for environmentally friendly products and services. As the first environmental label worldwide, it has stood for independence and credibility for over 35 years. It is an eco-label you can trust.read more
In Germany, ensuring water supply is a mandatory duty of the state. Responsibility lies with the municipalities, which can use a range of organisational and legal forms to comply with this duty. Applied to the abstracted water volumes this means that the public water supply abstracted around 5,1 billion cubic meters of water to supply the population with drinking water. Groundwater reserves are th...read more
Functional marine mammal acoustic communication evolved under natural ambient noise levels, which makes communication vulnerable to anthropogenic noise sources. In this report, we consider the potential long-range effects of airgun noise on marine mammal communication range. During the propagation process, airgun impulses are reflected multiple times from the sea surface, refracted in sound channe...read more
After agriculture in Germany has become more intensive over the past decades, many populations of farmland birds and mammals are in an unfavourable conservation status. For 27 farmland bird species and 22 farmland mammal species we compile trends, habitat (crop) selection, threats and risk management measures. There is scientific-based evidence for indirect effects of pesticides at the population...read more
Under the European Chemicals legislation REACH the release of a substance into the environment is estimated on the basis of emission factors. For this purpose industry can deduce realistic emission factors by developing specific Environmental Release Categories (spERCs) and documenting them in a corresponding fact sheet. The current project builds up on an earlier assessment conduc...read more
The implementation of a nanoproduct register as an instrument to increase the transparency on the use of nanomaterials in the EU and to ensure the regulatory oversight on nanomaterials has been discussed for quite a time. Reasons to implement a register are the uncertainties concerning the evaluation of the possible risks of nanomaterials for human health and the environment and the lack of knowle...read more
This report was inspired by the work we did on a project funded by the EEA that ran between June 2011 and March 2012. One of the main aims of the EEA project was to provide examples of how the evaluation of global mega trends presented in the SOER 2010 could be applied to regional topics, like resource scarcity or environmental goals. The authors have extensive experience in systems thinking and s...read more
The UBA’s motto, For our environment (“Für Mensch und Umwelt”), sums up our mission pretty well, we feel. In this video we give an insight into our work.
