Environmental policy, innovation and transformation: affirmative or disruptive?

ABSTRACT

The paper firstly summarizes the approach and findings to evaluate the effectiveness of environmental policies around the globe as it was undertaken in the Sixth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-6; 2019). The data gathered in GEO-6 reveals (1) a high level of institutional innovation, increasingly from the global south, (2) a lack of environmental policy integration (3) spatial and temporal dynamics and (4) the importance of the policy design. Current environmental policies are, however, not sufficient to effectively preserve natural resources and limit emissions to a sustainable level. This has led to a general recognition of the need for a transformative change that goes beyond mere improvements of efficiency. The second part of the paper analyses how environmental policies could contribute in shaping such transformations to sustainability. Transformative policies can be built on social innovations and experimentation with institutional innovation. This is compatible with incremental and sectoral policy making. However, given the complexity and stability of social systems, the outcomes of such policies are uncertain. This is why we argue for strengthening conventional, strategic environmental policies and complementing rather than replacing them with transformative policies.

KEYWORDS:

• Global environment assessment
• effectiveness environment policy
• transformative policies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Dr Klaus Jacob is political scientists at Freie Universitaet Berlin and research director of the Environmental Policy Research Centre (FFU). He was coordinating lead author of the Global Environment Outlook 6 published by UNEP in 2019. He researches and publishes on environmental policy integration, ecological modernization and transformative policies.

Prof Paul Ekins is Director of the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources at University College London, where he holds a Chair for Resources and Environmental Policy. He was the co-chair of the UN Global Environmental Outlook (GEO6), published by UNEP in 2019. His research focuses on the conditions and policies for achieving an environmentally sustainable economy, and he is an expert on several areas of energy-environment-economy (E3) interaction and environmental policy.