In 2018, the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), born out of activism, exists for forty years. The institute celebrated this on 28 June in the Stadsgehoorzaal in Leiden. In the morning, proud directors and researchers looked back and forth. After this several experts discussed the current environmental…

Professor of Ecotoxicology Martina Vijver and lecturer Maarten Schrama are the founders and managers of the Living Lab. As well as these two researchers, a number of other ecologists and biologists are involved in the research at the Lab.

The Advisory Board is an external Advisory Council, to advice the Board of Directors of CML about general strategies, research and education activities and evaluation procedures (Dutch: visitatie).

The global agri-food system plays a critical role in food security and environmental issues.

Materials balances have been used in the recent past for the analysis of substance oriented environmental problems and the formulation of measures for environmental policy. In this study an integrated tool, based on the materials balance principle, has been developed for the analysis of both environmental…

Creating information portals for support of European environmental policy.

The project falls in the context of the EU Thematic Strategy on the Sustainable Use of Natural Resources (COM(2005)670). The Institute for Environment and Resources (IES) of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) has developed three sets of decoupling indicators. Such indicators require the definition of a…

Lecture, Global Questions Seminar

Are there significant differences among the environmental impacts resulting form the production of Asian aquaculture commodities and what are the main causes for these?

Institute of Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science, Leiden University

Projects in the department of Environmental Biology

Food production in the Netherlands is an economic success but has led to many environmental issues, including nitrogen pollution. Recently, the policy to allow economic growth while reducing nitrogen losses was disapproved by the highest court in the Netherlands, casting the country into a nitrogen…

International trade has played a major role in defining the modern global economy. Trade, however, entangles the environmental pressures of economic sectors, giving the illusion of environmental improvements, while the opposite may be occurring.

How do technological systems impact the environment? And can they be designed in a more sustainable way? The Resources and Energy research program studies the importance of resources and energy for our society and aims to guide the shift towards a sustainable circular economy.

Recent publications

How does the commodification and re-appreciation of the contiguous uplands of Northeast India, Bangladesh and Burma/Myanmar transform the relationship between these states and their upland citizens?

This is the team of LAPP:

Contact Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML)

Institute of Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science, Leiden University

Institute of Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science, Leiden University

Overview of the publications of the department of Industrial Ecology (1982-2015)

Development & demonstration of low environmental impact innovation and optimization practices in pharma production.

What is the environmental impact, the human health impact and the life cycle and production costs of the lab, pilot and commercial diffusion of nanowires and nanowire-based photovoltaic technologies?

A substance flow analysis, covering about 99 % of the flows of chlorinated substances in the Netherlands.

Meet the core staff behind Global Transformations and Governance Challenges, which consists of a Professor, a Postdoctoral Researcher, a PhD Candidate, and multiple Programme Officers and Assistants.

Indicators to measure progress in de-linking economic growth and environmental pressure.

Research at the department of Environmental Biology

Our Centre’s teaching is concentrated in the MSc Governance of Sustainability, which is a transdisciplinary master program hosted in collaboration with the Institute of Environmental Sciences. We aim to educate future change makers who have the knowledge and the skills to develop governance solutions…

How can we make the production of chlorine cheaper and more friendly for the environment?

Ionica Smeets is planning to give the prize money that she won with the Iris Medal, a prize for excellent science communication, to student projects.

Met groot plezier heeft de Universiteit Leiden van 1 tot 4 november het X Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Hispanistas del Benelux (AHBx) georganiseerd, met het thema Transhispanismos: contactos y contagios (Transhispanismes: contact en besmetting). De AHBx is een platform in de Benelux dat…

This project aims to assess the risk of spread of antimicrobial resistance genes in the environment derived from currently used synthetic biology approaches in the field of drug discovery.

In 2021, the eleventh Conference of the International Society for Industrial Ecology will take place in Leiden. The Institute of Environmental Sciences Leiden (CML) has been elected to host the next biennial meeting at the latest conference of the Society in Beijing, China. ‘Industrial ecology can play…

Science, Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML)

Development of an aggregated impact indicator to measure decoupling.

The earth has more than 7 billion inhabitants, all of whom leave behind traces of pollution. However, not all forms of pollution have the same harmful effect. Leiden scientists help determine where we should put our priorities.

What are the environmental trade-offs for SMEs considering moving from monoculture aquaculture practice towards IMTA? What are the environmental trade-offs comparing IMTA species with their conventional monoculture alternatives?

CML’s education programme aims at training (under)graduate and graduate students for integrated and multidisciplinary sustainability research and for better decision making in managing the world’s natural resources, environmental quality and biodiversity.

The research within the Food research programme at CML focuses on a transition towards sustainable food production and consumption systems. We investigate from a very small to a very large scale, at a local, national or international level. We do so by researching for example molecular tools, food systems,…

Rich countries are getting richer because of environmentally polluting (construction) investments from the past, largely at the expense of poor countries. This was shown by long-term economic and environmental data. 'The gap between poor and rich countries is widening.' Scientists from the Leiden Institute…

Our institute aspires to be the center of excellence for strategic and quantitative research and education on sustainable use and governance of natural resources and biodiversity. We have two distinct research programmes: Environmental Biology and Industrial Ecology. The department of Industrial…

The currently available in vitro generated human skin equivalents resemble the human skin in many aspects. However, some essential barrier characteristics do not fully mimic the native barrier. Consequently, the human skin equivalents cannot be used for screening of drugs for skin penetration.

EXIOBASE is a global, detailed Multi-regional Environmentally Extended Supply and Use / Input Output (MR EE SUT/IOT) database. It was developed by harmonizing and detailing SUT for a large number of countries, estimating emissions and resource extractions by industry, linking the country EE SUT via…

A new environmental accounting framework using externality data and input-output tools for policy analysis.