Circular Economy in the EU: Measures and a new Monitoring Framework

The EU has recently published a “Circular Economy Package”, introducing various measures designed to advance the transition to a circular economy. Among these is a monitoring system that can assess progress towards a circular economy. The foundations for this monitoring framework were developed by the Institute of Social Ecology in Vienna in collaboration with the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission in Ispra.

Human impacts on forests and grasslands much larger and older than previously assumed

Human biomass utilization reduces global carbon stocks in vegetation by 50%, implying that massive emissions of CO₂to the atmosphere have occurred over the past centuries and millennia. The contribution of forest management and livestock grazing on natural grasslands to global carbon losses is of similar magnitude as that of deforestation. Currently, these effects are underappreciated in existing global carbon models and assessments of the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from land-based production. Without full consideration of land management effects, global climate forecasts and calculations of the GHG effects of future bioenergy policies are error prone, seriously jeopardizing the robust evaluation of measures that would help achieving the 1,5°C target of the Paris Agreement. These are some of the result of a study headed by Karl-Heinz Erb from the Institute of Social Ecology, published in the scientific journal “Nature” on 20.12.2017.

83. ZUG-Minisymposium mit Michael Wagreich

Das Zentrum für Umweltgeschichte (ZUG) lädt zu folgender Veranstaltung:

Das Anthropozän – ein neues (geologisches) Erdzeitalter?

Präsentation:

Ao. Univ. Prof. Dr. Michael Wagreich

Department für Geodynamik und Sedimentologie, Universität Wien

Einleitung:
Assoc. Prof. Mag. Dr. Martin Schmid
Zentrum für Umweltgeschichte, Institut für Soziale Ökologie, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt Read more →

In the cosmos of… Helmut Haberl

My cosmos is a house in Maria Anzbach on the western edge of the Vienna Woods. The beauty of the location and the surrounding garden were important motives for the relocation away from Vienna. I grew up in a rural area in Garsten, Upper Austria. When I turned 40, it dawned on me that I could no longer bear to live in a big city and that I needed to change my residential environment. I bought the house in 2011, together with my sister. It was in a pretty desperate state, and we renovated it from the ground floor to the roof.