Documents Barth, Jonathan 3 results

"Is it possible to enjoy both economic growth and environmental sustainability?
This question is a matter of fierce political debate between green growth and post-growth advocates. Considering what is at stake, a careful assessment to determine whether the scientific foundations behind this decoupling hypothesis are robust or not is needed.
This report reviews the empirical and theoretical literature to assess the validity of this hypothesis. The conclusion is both overwhelmingly clear and sobering: not only is there no empirical evidence supporting the existence of a decoupling of economic growth from environmental pressures on anywhere near the scale needed to deal with environmental breakdown, but also, and perhaps more importantly, such decoupling appears unlikely to happen in the future. ‘Decoupling debunked' highlights the need for the rethinking of green growth policies and to complement efficiency with sufficiency."

"For a long time, the Commission's objectives mainly focused on market integration, economic growth, competitiveness and efficiency. With the Foresight Report, the Commission has initiated an important discussion on the objectives of policymaking in the EU following the Covid-19 pandemic – focused on resilience.

A new paradigm centred around resilience entails a shift of perspective. Rather than looking at policy objectives, resilience asks what capacities are needed to ensure key societal objectives are met when responding to shocks. A propserous Europe is not only sustainable and fair. Above all it is a Europe that has capacities to ensure wellbeing and environmental protection in times of change – through strong social security systems, social and technical creativity and innovation or through robust value chains. The Covid-19 has certainly shown the importance of having such capacities."

"The COVID-19 pandemic has been a wakeup call for societies around the world to see how vulnerable we all are to large-scale shocks, and in parallel this has exposed the weaknesses in our existing systems and structures to protect people and planet. There is an opportunity for responses to the pandemic to deliver a sustainable recovery and build a resilient future. However, our focus must be on building a prosperous, sustainable, resilient and just future and not on reconstructing the past.
Against this backdrop, it is vital that Member States not only tackle the short-term solutions that will solve problems today, but design policies, measures and reforms which create systemic change for sustainable and resilient societies that can adapt to or mitigate future crises. These solutions need to benefit people and economies while also protecting nature and biodiversity, as climate change and biodiversity loss are threatening the essential foundations to life.

Recognizing the importance of the environment in resilience-building, the European Commission set a requirement for 37% of funding to climate objectives and has set out a framework for excluding certain activities which lock in environmentally destructive measures through the “Do No Significant Harm” principle.
These principles and conditions present a new challenge for policymakers who will need to identify policies that achieve multiple objectives at once rather than siloed solutions. In addition, Member States should ensure that these policies facilitate a systemic shift towards a regenerative, distributive and resilient economy rather than stabilising the status quo. What is missing, however, is guidance on what policy measures are able to address this challenge and how to design them.
This policy brief aims to demonstrate how the conditions from the European Commission can be used to boost creativity and out-of-the-box thinking to design policies that support both people and nature in recovery; policies that contribute to climate objectives while also doing no significant harm to any of the above. This brief engages directly with guidance from the Commission by demonstrating how to utilise this guidance to deliver systemic change through the recovery process. We offer examples of ten interventions from Annex VI of the legislation of the RRF, the application of the DNSH principle and two examples of reforms which involve financial instruments to show how this approach can support a resilient recovery."