Description: In recent years, policies to promote renewable energy have become increasingly popular among municipalities in different parts of the world. This article examines the case of Germany. It argues that municipalities, compared to other state and private actors, already have the potential to play a key role in German renewable energy governance. Although both private actors and the European Union have gained importance in the past 20 years, German municipalities still play a crucial role and can apply five distinct and important modes of governance in the field of renewable energy policy. In this regard, the notion of a general development towards a "cooperating and ensuring state", which increasingly delegates its tasks and thus becomes less important, cannot be confirmed in the field of municipal renewable energy governance in Germany.

Description: Another summit of change, known as Rio+20, has passed in summer 2012, nourishing the rumours of a green economy. Building up a green economy seems to be the all over recipe for different crises of capitalism, among them climate change and resource scarcity. Yet efficiency and consistency, as their main strategies, do not suffice to reach sustainable levels, as they cause rebound effects and keep stimulating economy growth. Obviously, there are limits to green growth, too. Can we conceive an economy, and respective economic institutions, that serve human needs and wealth without a built-in necessity to grow? What kind of political, mental, and individual changes does a sufficiency economy require? And what are perspectives and policies to actually start implementing it? Just before Rio +20 the symposium "Economy of Sufficiency", devoted to Wolfgang Sachs on the occasion of his 65th birthday in 2011, examined these questions in three dimensions. Accordingly this selection of contributions to the symposium follows the chapters "Wealth in diversity" (Ashok Khosla, Marianne Gronemeyer, Vandana Shiva), "Enjoyable limits" (Richard B. Norgaard, Tim Jackson) and "Creating commons" (Ezio Manzini, Silke Helfrich). The essays indicate the historical development of the ideas on a sufficiency economy. Wandering through discourses of sustainable development for several decades, the authors map the range of perspectives, practices as well as barriers and bridge them between cultures, agencies and schools.

Description: Artificial substrates are omnipresent today in most estuaries mostly in form of massive rip-rap used for groynes and jetties. In the Weser estuary, Germany, 60% of the shoreline is covered with such artificial substrates while, natural rocky substrate is lacking, as in all Wadden Sea estuaries. This large quantity of artificial substrates may be colonized by a benthic hard-substrate community which differs from the local natural soft-substrate assemblage. In this study we examined species compositions, abundances, biomass, and numbers of species of subtidal benthic communities on groynes and in the natural habitat, the sediment, along the salinity gradient of the Weser estuary. Species composition changed on both substrates significantly with salinity and was also significantly different between the substrates. In a comparison with the sediment, the groynes did not provide any benefit for non-indigenous nor for endangered species in terms of abundance, biomass, and number of species, but represent habitats with higher total abundances and biomass; though some non-indigenous species even occurred exclusively on groynes. In particular, groynes supported filter-feeding organisms which play an important role by linking benthic and pelagic food webs. The dominance of the suspension feeders affects crucial estuarine ecosystem services and may have important implications for the estuarine management by altering the estuarine ecological quality status. Hence, artificial substrates should be considered in future conservation planning and in ecological quality monitoring of the benthic fauna according to the European Water Framework Directive.

Description: Magnetic anomaly identifications underpin plate tectonic reconstructions and form the primary dataset from which age of the oceanic lithosphere and seafloor spreading regimes in the ocean basins can be determined. Although these identifications are an invaluable resource, their usefulness to the wider scientific community has been limited due to the lack of a central community infrastructure to organize, host and update these interpretations. We have developed an open-source, community-driven online infrastructure as a repository for quality-checked magnetic anomaly identifications from all ocean basins. We provide a global sample dataset that comprises 96,733 individually picked magnetic anomaly identifications organized by ocean basin and publication reference, and provide accompanying Hellinger-format files, where available. Our infrastructure is designed to facilitate research in plate tectonic reconstructions or research that relies on an assessment of plate reconstructions, for both experts and non-experts alike. To further enhance the existing repository and strengthen its value, we encourage others in the community to contribute to this effort.

Description: This brochure summarises key findings on energy solutions for the preparation and processing of food using local and renewable energy resources. More data, examples and information are available on the internet platform: www.wisions.net

Description: Our perception of design is changing, for design today is no longer concerned only with aesthetics. Now the key factors are interdisciplinary competence and approaches to problem solving. Both politicians as well as businesses recognise design's hybridity and increasingly implement it as a driver of sustainable development (see Chap. 2: Design as a Key Management Factor for Sustainability). But what exactly does "sustainability" mean? What does it mean in this specific context? People must make use of natural resources to meet their basic needs. In this process, resources are transferred into commercial circulation and usually transformed into products with a particular function. Yet the environment is limited and humanity uses more resources than the Earth can sustainably provide. It is time to rethink and generate the same usage while consuming fewer resources (see Chap. 3: Environmental Space - Challenging Transitions). Most countries have incorporated sustainability strategies into their political agendas in order to counteract the threats of climate change caused by the overuse of natural resources, high CO2 emissions, and other factors. The indicators for these strategies vary greatly from country to country (see Chap. 4: Sustainability - Challenges, Politics, Indicators). These indicators need to be taken into account if we are to successfully implement a product or service within a specific context. A concept can only be successful when country-specific indicators are taken into account and the societal context is incorporated into the plan right from the start. The goal is to develop services that support national sustainability targets in production and consumption systems (see Chap. 5: Managing Sustainable Development). When it comes to companies, these changes can simply be introduced in the form of services or products. In the end, it is the users who decide on the success or failure of innovative solutions by either integrating them into their daily lives or ignoring them. Solutions will only be integrated into users' lives when their role within the social framework remains unchallenged by behavioural transformations caused by use of the solution. In order for users to be able to adopt innovations, sustainable development must take place simultaneously on many different levels. These multi-levelled transitions allow for the transformation of society as a whole. Designers can act as agents of change by providing the needed innovations (see Chap. 6: Transition Requires Change Agents for Sustainability). If we are to develop suitable solutions and new approaches, the real needs have to be analysed at the beginning of the development process. New physical products, which frequently result in auxiliary products, are often developed without taking into account the overall context, whereas the development of service-orientated solutions is ignored. A physical product is not absolutely necessary. A service (which is naturally dependent on physical products) can usually fulfil the need just as well - or perhaps even better and at a lower cost – while using fewer or no resources (see Chap. 7: Needs & Services - An Approach). There are a variety of possible approaches to integrate sustainability into the design process (see Chap. 8: Design Process). Precisely which solution is "most or more sustainable" (this is dependent on the defined targets and the indicators used) is often not immediately obvious, and we must turn to a set of methods for a transparent and tangible assessment (see Chap. 9: Sustainability Assessment in Design - Overview and Integration of Methods).