Leading up to IEEP's Think 2030 conference, experts express their views on Europe's most pressing sustainability issues in the Think 2030 blog series, Pathways to 2030.
The tenth edition of Pathways to 2030 features Nick Molho, Executive Director of the Aldersgate Group. The next European Commission must adopt a more positive stance on the value of regulations. Far from being a drag on the economy, well-designed environmental regulations can increase business investment in innovation and skills and drive competitiveness, he argues.
In environmental terms there are at least two ways of looking at the prospects for 2018. Viewed through the rather sober lens of EU process, it has the look of a project completion and tidying up period with limited long term impetus to the last full year of the current European Parliament and Commission.
A newly published study for the European Commission by IEEP and partners investigates civil society’s role in improving the effectiveness of environmental taxes to reduce pollution and better manage natural resources.
New IEEP report finds the agriculture sector can significantly contribute to the EU’s climate commitments by reducing its non-CO2 emissions. It also finds these contributions can be delivered cost efficiently with environmental co-benefits without impacting production.
IEEP’s work on innovative financing for EU biodiversity conservation was presented in Cancun, Mexico at the 13th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
Voluntary biodiversity offsetting was piloted in six English areas by local planning authorities and stakeholder organisations who agreed to take part in the government programme. IEEP and Collingwood Environmental Planning, together with David Tyldesley, assessed the UK government programme from 2012 to 2014.
This study by ICF International, IEEP and national experts reviewed international best practice for designing biodiversity offsetting metrics and establishing mechanisms for ensuring long term conservation benefits from offsetting. It explores options for implementation at the European level and possible challenges. The report follows up on the IEEP report on policy options to achieve no net loss of biodiversity.
IEEP’s Patrick ten Brink presented on Nature and its Role in the Transition to a Green Economy at the TEEB Multi-stakeholder International Workshop held on 21-22 January in Beijing, China. The talk contributed to current discussions in China on how decision-makers can better consider the multiple values of nature and ecosystems, with a focus on protected areas.
A case study which looks into the extent to which the Eco-accounts in place in Baden-Württemberg in Germany are effective and consistent with the EU’s no-net-loss objective and international offsetting principles.
A new IEEP led study concludes that mandatory biodiversity offsetting is required to achieve no net loss of biodiversity in the EU, but its introduction could be counter-productive if it is not introduced cautiously and regulated strictly. The first priority should be to better implement existing nature conservation measures.
There is an urgent need to find sufficient resources to enable developing countries to implement the global targets for biodiversity by 2020. Financing the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity from different sectoral funding flows can complement global biodiversity financing.
IEEP assessed the financing needs to implement Target 2 of the Biodiversity Strategy (target to maintain ecosystem services and restore 15% of degraded ecosystems by 2020) with eftec. The report showed that a large increase in funding will be required if Target 2 is to be attained, but also that there are a range of potential funding sources that could be increasingly used.
This report describes the results of a project led by the Economics for the Environment Consultancy (eftec) and IEEP, which examined the potential use of habitat banking in the EU in the context of alternative ...
Forest ecosystems in Europe represent a manageable resource that can partly be used to offset emissions of CO2. In this report, we provide a quantitative analysis of feasible management measures in European ...
