Sustainable Climate Policy Integration in the European Union

Abstract

The European Union increasingly integrates climate objectives into other policy areas. However, minimizing greenhouse gas emissions is not necessarily compatible with environmental protection or sustainable development, as the examples of nuclear energy, hydropower and biofuels illustrate. Therefore, climate policy integration needs to be compatible with the overarching objective of sustainable development. This article discusses under which conditions legislation that integrates climate objectives contributes to sustainable development and how this can be evaluated at the policy proposal stage. The key contribution is to illustrate in the European context how legislation on climate policy integration can be designed to also contribute to sustainable development. Based on the European Sustainable Development Strategy, this paper proposes four criteria: policy integration and coherence, environmental protection, social and economic development and justice/participation. These criteria are used to evaluate the Renewable Energy Directive and the 2014–2020 Common Agricultural Policy proposal. The paper concludes that both case studies can serve as best‐practice examples for other policies on the European and national levels of how climate policy integration can be designed to also meet minimum levels of sustainable development. Policy implications are the inclusion of these criteria for sustainable climate policy integration into EU impact assessments and their use as minimum benchmarks in the policy debate as an evaluation tool that can be easily used by policy makers and stakeholders to evaluate if a negotiated compromise on a policy that integrates climate objectives still contributes to both reducing emissions and sustainable development. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Climate policy integration and governing indirect land-use changes—Actors in the EU's biofuel policy-formulation

“…Keating, 2012) and, further, unfolds new nuances concerning the examinations of iLUC policy-formulation. For example, Palmer (2012Palmer ( , 2014 and Rietig (2013) do not illustrate the differentiation between NGOs' approaches to the governance of biofuels.…”

“…Consequently, the policy-making of iLUC fits the core idea of CPI which, in its simplest form, refers to integrating climate policy targets and legal instruments into other policies operating on different sectors and scales (e.g. Adelle and Russel, 2013;Rietig, 2013). I examine this case of CPI through the wide constellations of actors who are being influenced by the EU's biofuel policy and influencing the policymaking processes themselves.…”

“…The scalar settings of the European biofuel assemblage range from singular land grabs for biofuels in the Global South (Sassen, 2013) to the EU's multilateral free trade negotiations (Lamers et al, 2011). Against this backdrop, Kok and de Coninck (2007), Adelle and Russel (2013) and Rietig (2013) have called for more integrated evaluation of climate policy objectives with the ones associated with social development or environment. Concurrently, Palmer (2012Palmer ( , 2014, Levidow (2013) and Humalisto and Joronen (2013) has criticised the recent biofuel policies of the EU for taking a narrow, carbon-based approach for governing the complex and evolving spatialities of biofuel development.…”

The Impact of Soil Carbon Sequestration on Adaptation in Europe's Agricultural Sector and the Potential Role of Regulatory Instruments

“…The CAP relies heavily on command-and-control style provisions and does not displays flexibility for farmers how to achieve the policy targets. 120 This character does not match soil carbon projects as these need to be tailored at farm level, taking into account local environmental factors as well as the characteristics of the individual farm.…”

Coherence, Efficiency, and Independence of the EU Environmental Policy System: Results of Complementary Statistical and Econometric Analyses

“…Table S1, Table S2 and Table S3 in the Online Supplementary Material summarize the classifications for DEC, DIR, and REG, respectively. Note that I will not consider the implementation (Ivanov & Dobreva, 2011;Newig & Koontz, 2013;Wolkinger et al, 2012), or the degrees of effectiveness or integration (Atkinson & Klausen, 2011;Biesbroek et al, 2010;Dupont & Oberthür, 2012;Jordan et al 2012;Rietig, 2013;Steurer et al, 2010), of the EU environmental policy system, due to lack of reliable and comprehensive data.…”