Environmental Policy

Anna Cavazzini has been a member a Member of the European Parliament for The Greens/EFA since 2019. She gives her thoughts on what needs to be done to secure a circular economy and a just transition.

Global environmental policy 50 years after Stockholm 1972. In this dossier we do not only look back at 50 years of global environmental policy, but also forward: What can we do better now to ensure the necessary transformation still succeeds?

Loss of biodiversity, global warming, the hole in the ozone layer – in the past fifty years, humanity has tackled major problems. But how did we do?

In June 2022, the world will meet in Stockholm for the anniversary of the first UN conference. Now it must not only name the problems, but also point the way to the future. 

What have we learned from the last 50 years? This review highlights some important milestones in global environmental policy. 

Climate, a pandemic, armed conflicts and hunger – "multilateralism as usual" will not be enough, if we want to get a grip on the overlapping crisis. 

How do we distribute responsibility for our planet evenly? Between North and South? Within nations? A brief history of environmental justice. 

In their book "Making Climate Policy Work", our authors describe the obstacles that stand in the way of a serious carbon price policy - and why only a government industrial policy can lead to the goal.

The fight against poverty doesn't need to be a barrier to environmental and climate protection. How low- and high-income countries can work together towards climate-neutrality, cutting emissions and resource consumption. 

International trade rules – be they those of the World Trade Organization (WTO) or bilateral agreements – favor exploitative relationships. And the latest IPCC report warns that many of these trade and investment agreements severely limit the political scope for climate and environmental protection. The EU, with its attractive single market, has a great deal of power and influence here. We must take advantage of both now.

Reasons why we need to have the eco-feminist movement strongly present in Stockholm this June 2022.

The worldwide bestseller "The Limits to Growth" was published fifty years ago. Our author takes stock of the debate and suggests a way forward.

There are more than 6,000 glaciers in northern Pakistan, including Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). These are clean water reservoirs that actually irrigate Pakistan. But these glaciers are changing rapidly due to climate change. The ecosystem of these areas is changing. Global warming has accelerated their melting and more lakes have been formed as a result. Flooding due to the melting endangers lives and livelihoods of millions of local people and adversely affects the ecology. 

Women are more affected than men by plastics. Biological reasons are part of the problem: their bodies react in different ways to toxins, and the hygiene products that women use are often contaminated. But alternatives do exist.

A new policy paper by the Global Forest Coalition addresses offsets to biodiversity. It shows that offsets mostly do not contribute to biodiversity conservation and also have significant negative impacts on women and indigenous peoples.

In March 2020, the OECD Global Forum on Environment focused on "Mainstreaming Gender and Empowering Women for Environmental Sustainability". This summary report on the OECD-Forum highlights selected environment-related sectors and policies, and how they should be discussed from a gender-responsive perspective.

To deal with the dramatic consequences of the global environmental and climate crises, international attention is also growing for civil society environmental movements and their louder feminist demands.

Gender justice, democracy and socio-ecological sustainability are politically and economically inextricably linked. Barbara Unmüßig, President of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, gives an insight into her own experiences and develops recommendations for action for politicians.

Despite the Thai government’s ban of four more types of single-use plastics in 2022, up to 250,000 tonnes of imported plastic waste from other nations continues to flow into the country annually through the international plastic waste trade. Thailand is trying to stay the course with further efforts to mitigate plastic pollution, but there are still challenges in waste sorting and collection on the ground.

CAN – the Climate Action Network - is the largest international civil society network, that has monitored the UN climate negotiations for many years. Whether at national or international level, how can civil society participation be ensured at all in times of pandemic? What does this mean for the capacity for action and strategy of a global network like CAN? A conversation between Tasneem Essop, Executive Director of CAN International and Barbara Unmüßig, President of the Heinrich Böll Foundation