The EU is the world's largest trading bloc. It provides the biggest export market for around 80 countries; and EU Member States account for 16% of world imports and exports. Consequently, the EU has a considerable impact on third countries through trade, including the way in which international trade is conducted and how environmental and wider sustainability related aspects are addressed. This policy paper explores what a truly green EU trade policy under the EU Green Deal should look like.
This special edition of Perspectives was compiled with the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s North Africa offices and the Transform Africa project. It is dedicated to the emerging conversation of alternative approaches that challenge the historical bias towards the industrialisation of agriculture and the food system as the main strategy to address food insecurity while preparing for a +2°C world.
The 2019 Europe Sustainable Development Report compares the performance of the EU and its 28 member states on all 17 SDGs and provides detailed country profiles using a mix of data sources. As the new European Commission prepares the European Green Deal, the report sheds light on the key economic, social and environmental sustainability challenges faced by the member states and the European Union as a whole in their progress towards SDGs.
The present study, authored by scientists from different backgrounds, makes the eloquent case for such a reflection, pause, and reassessment. The publication is recommended to any reader concerned about our oceans' future.
Facts and Figures on EU Farming Policy: No other economic activity is so closely interwoven with the human and natural environment as is agriculture. If farming changes, so too the ecological and social systems that it hosts must change. The Agriculture Atlas shows how closely Europe’s agriculture is intertwined with our lives and our living space and pushes for a better, fundamentally different set of agricultural policies.
The paper outlines the environmental dimension of the European security policy and security-related foreign policy and discusses how the integration of environmental concerns into this policy framework could – and should – be improved to support the delivery of the 2030 Sustainability Agenda, both in the EU and globally.
The rapid development of Indonesia’s palm oil industry, particularly over the last four decades, which to some extent has been ‘development at all costs’, has generated significant revenues but has caused simultaneously massive environmental degradation. Human rights violations in palm oil plantations are also widely documented.
For a long time, the issue of climate change has been approached primarily from an environmental rather than a social perspective. As climate effects on communities have been increasingly felt around the planet during the past decade, the perception of impacts on communities has increased around the globe.
The study demonstrates the complexity of climate co-funding, the local obstacles in host countries, and the inadequacy of supervisory procedures. It also shows the importance of integrating climate change, human rights and gender equality policies into the development of geothermal projects and their enforcement at country level.
