Overview

Three main lines of research can be identified in the projects, experts' reports and other scientific activities in research field Ecological Economics and Environmental Policy:

• ecological-economical valuation (cost-benefit analysis taking the example of dyke relaying, valuation aspects of the EU water framework directive, utilisation of organic waste)
  
• environmental economic and policy questions ("ecological industrial policies", environment and innovation, "the future of work", eastern enlargement of the EU and environment and governance structures for a sustainable development)
  
• contributions to the broadly interpreted sustainability debate (regional river basin management, civil society and governance, political time strategies and sustainability).

In spite of the continuous content of our work, the focus of the issues dealt with in recent years has shifted. The basis of such a shift are economic and social changes which can be described using the headwords internationalisation, globalisation and sustainability.

Purely national environmental policy measures are, due to international regulatory integration and interconnections in the world economy, no longer appropriate today. Environmental policies require an expanded, international angle of vision. This can be established even for projects with a pronounced regional reference.

Even the change to the regulatory regime which arises through EU directives is characterised by this expanded angle of vision. In the forefront of our observations are the aspects of regulatory competition in the EU as well as the concepts of the integration of environmental protection in other fields of politics forced on by the EU.