Nitrogen. Too much of a good thing?Useful or harmful? A substance with many facetsThe element nitrogen is essential for all life on earth. In order to act as a building block of life however, it must form chemical compounds with other elements and thus be converted into its reactive state. Despite being the principle component of our atmosphere, molecular atmospheric nitrogen cannot be used directly by most living organisms.Waste not, want notHow the modern circular economy worksThe growing level of global consumption requires us to rethink how we deal with natural resources. A circular economy – one which fully integrates all aspects ranging from product design, sustainable production methods and patterns of consumption to recycling – makes significant contributions to resource conservation.Mobility of the futureThe (energy) transition in the transport sectorThe transport sector, especially road transport, is responsible for around 18 percent of German greenhouse gases – and is, unfortunately, the only area that has not been able to reduce its emissions since 1990. To change this situation, a large part of the traffic must be avoided in the first place and low-emission modes must become more widely implemented. In addition, we need a significantly more climate-friendly energy supply for the traffic.
The UBA annual publication 2013Noise protection is one of the key thematic focus areas of UBA's work in 2013. More than half of the people in Germany feel disturbed by noise. Another focus area is oceans, which are under stress from overfishing and over-fertilisation in particular. The hunt for raw materials on the ocean floor also poses a new threat. The third focus area is sustainable building and living, which means not only protecting the climate but also using building materials that consume few raw materials and are healthy.
The UBA celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2014. As an exception we took this occasion to take a look at the past in our annual "What Matters" publication, namely at the most important milestones in German environmental policy with which the UBA is closely associated. The publication also casts a spotlight on the most current topics in environmental protection. International climate protection policy must set more ambitious targets to reduce air pollution and ensure better protection of our soils. A separate chapter discusses how resource efficiency must become the order of the day for information and communication technologies.